Stock market variance-return or price relations are sometimes negative and sometimes positive. We explain these puzzling findings using a model with two ("bad" and "good") variances. In the model, conditional equity premium depends positively on bad variance and negatively on good variance....

Using options-implied variance, a forward-looking measure of conditional variance, we revisit the debate on the idiosyncratic risk-return relation. In both cross-sectional (for individual stocks) and time-series (for the market index) regressions, we find a negative relation between...

There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the apparent weak or negative relation between risk (conditional variance) and return (expected returns) in the aggregate stock market. We develop and estimate an empirical model based on the ICAPM to investigate this relation. Our primary...

This paper shows that a relatively high level of average U.S. industry- or firm-level idiosyncratic stock volatility is usually associated with a future appreciation in the U.S. dollar. For most foreign currencies, the relation is statistically significant in both in sample and out-of-sample...

Over the period 1927:Q1 to 2005:Q4, the average CAPM-based idiosyncratic variance (IV) and stock market variance jointly forecast stock market returns. This result holds up quite well in a number of robustness checks, and we show that the predictive power of the average IV might come from its...

This paper tests the conjecture that the value premium constructed from the cross-section of stocks proxies for investment opportunities by investigating whether it helps explain the puzzling empirical risk-return tradeoff in the stock market across time. In contrast with many early authors, we...

We find that a relatively high level of average U.S. industry- or firm-level idiosyncratic stock volatility is usually associated with a future appreciation in the U.S. dollar. This relation is highly significant for most foreign currencies in both in-sample and out-of-sample forecasting tests....

We show that the value-weighted idiosyncratic stock volatility and aggregate stock market volatility jointly exhibit strong predictive abilities for excess stock market returns, although they don't do so individually. While we uncover a positive risk-return relation in the stock market, as...

Some recent research shows that macro variables, despite their enormous in-sample predictive ability, do not forecast stock returns out of sample. Specifically, Brennan and Xia (2002) cast doubt on the forecasting power of the consumption-wealth ratio (cay) because it is negligible in...

We find that past stock market variance forecasts excess stock market returns and that its predictive ability is greatly enhanced if the consumption-wealth ratio is also included in the forecasting equation. While the risk-return tradeoff is found negative if we use the latter as the...