This paper shows that the presence of persistent uninsurable risk concentrated in economic depressions has the potential to resolve two well-known asset pricing puzzles. It is also shown that the presence of such risk in more normal economic expansions and recessions is likely to be much less...

Several recent empirical tests of the Capital Asset Pricing Model have been based on the conditional relationship between betas and market returns. This paper shows that this method needs reconsideration. An adjusted version of this test is presented. It is then demonstrated that the adjusted...