Four new prominent asset pricing factors have recently been proposed. We test whether these factors fulfill necessary conditions for qualifying those as risk factors. We show that the investment and betting-against-beta factors fulfill these conditions. However, the profitability and quality...

Short rebate fees are a strong predictor of the cross-section of stock returns, both gross and net of fees. We document a large "shorting premium": the cheap-minus-expensive-to-short (CME) portfolio of stocks has a monthly average gross return of 1.31%, a net-of-fees return of 0.78%, and a 1.44%...

We build an equilibrium model to explain why stock return predictability concentrates in bad times. The key feature is that investors use different forecasting models, and hence assess uncertainty differently. As economic conditions deteriorate, uncertainty rises and investors' opinions...

We develop a finite-sample procedure to test for mean-variance efficiency and spanning without imposing any parametric assumptions on the distribution of model disturbances. In so doing, we provide an exact distribution-free method to test uniform linear restrictions in multivariate linear...

In the three-factor model of Fama and French (1993), portfolio returns are explained by the factors Small Minus Big (SMB and High Minus Low (HML) which capture returns related to firm capitalization (size) and the book-to-market ratio (B/M). In the standard approach of the model, both the test...

This paper studies the pricing of long and short run variance and correlation risk. The predictive power of the market variance risk premium for returns is driven by the correlation risk premium and the systematic part of individual variance premia. Furthermore, I find that aggregate volatility...