One of the best documented propositions in the field of finance is that, on average, investors have received higher rates of return on in- vestment securities for bearing greater risk. This paper looks at the historical evidence regarding risk and return, explains the fundamentals of portfolio...

The standard test for the pricing role of aggregate idiosyncratic risk in the conventional predictive regression considers aggregate total idiosyncratic risk a reasonable proxy for its undiversified component, which should be priced as theory suggests. However, when the priced component is...

Despite the debate on the pricing of idiosyncratic risk, it is generally believed that the pricing effect is likely to exist among small stocks due to lack of diversification and information asymmetry predicted by Merton (1987). However, given the size of Asset Under Management, most...

Different from prior research that studies weather related factors on equity returns from a behavioral perspective, we investigate air quality on stock returns from a risk perspective using Chinese data. When air-quality risk increases, it not only depresses economic activities of firms but also...

In contrast to the current literature, we provide new evidence supporting a positive relation between idiosyncratic risk and the expected future market return. Since a large part of the idiosyncratic risk can be diversified away easily, the conventional aggregate idiosyncratic risk measures can...