The authors find support for a negative relation between conditional expected monthly return and conditional variance of monthly return using a GARCH-M model modified by allowing (1) seasonal patterns in volatility, (2) positive and negative innovations to returns having different impacts on...

Without the assumption of conditional homoskedasticity, a general asymptotic distribution theory for the two-stage cross-sectional regression method shows that the standard errors produced by the Fama-MacBeth procedure do not necessarily overstate the precision of the risk premium estimates....

The stochastic discount factor (SDF) method provides a unified general framework for econometric analysis of asset-pricing models. There have been concerns that, compared to the classical beta method, the generality of the SDF method comes at the cost of efficiency in parameter estimation and...

When consumption betas of stocks are computed using year-over-year consumption growth based upon the fourth quarter, the consumption-based asset pricing model (CCAPM) explains the cross-section of stock returns as well as the <link rid="b25">Fama and French (1993)</link> three-factor model. The CCAPM's performance...

In this article, the authors develop alternative ways to compare asset pricing models when it is understood that their implied stochastic discount factors do not price all portfolios correctly. Unlike comparisons based on chi square statistics associated with null hypotheses that models are...

Most empirical studies of the static capital asset pricing model (CAPM) assume that betas remain constant over time and that the return on the value-weighted portfolio of all stocks is a proxy for the return on aggregate wealth. The general consensus is that the static CAPM is unable to explain...

We find that on average, an announcement of rising unemployment is good news for stocks during economic expansions and bad news during economic contractions. Unemployment news bundles three types of primitive information relevant for valuing stocks: information about future interest rates, the...

Knowledge of the one-month interest rate is useful in forecasting the sign, as well as the variance, of the excess return on stocks. The services of a portfolio manager who makes use of the forecasting model to shift funds between bills and stocks would be worth an annual management fee of 2...