The “low risk anomaly” refers to the empirical pattern that apparently high-risk equities do not earn commensurately high returns. In this paper, we consider the possibility that the risk anomaly represents mispricing, not a misspecification of risk, and develop the implications for...

Higher-beta and higher-volatility equities do not earn commensurately higher returns, a pattern known as the risk anomaly. In this paper, we consider the possibility that the risk anomaly represents mispricing and develop its implications for corporate leverage. The risk anomaly generates a...

The link between measures of risk and return within the equity market has been very weak over the past 47 years: In the United States, returns on high-risk stocks have cumulatively fallen short of the returns on low-risk stocks, during a period when the equity market as a whole experienced high...