The value premium is the empirical observation that low market/book “value” stocks have higher returns than high market/book “growth” stocks. In this paper, we report evidence that there is a value premium for firms in financial distress despite the anomalous observation that firms in...

Our study examines whether financial distress risk is systematic risk using twelve portfolios sorted by size, book-to-market, and leverage and a portfolio of distressed firms covering an 18-year period. It also tests the explanatory power of the risk factors that best capture default risk. The...

We examine the puzzling negative relation between financial distress risk and the cross-section of expected returns. We find that the negative relation is most pronounced for up to six months after portfolio formation but after that, high distress stocks eventually earn persistently high...