We exploit the merger between BlackRock and Barclays Global Investors to study how changes in expected ownership concentration affect the investment behavior of funds and the cross-section of stocks worldwide. We find that funds with open-end structures and a large exposure to commonly-held...

Economic expectations play a central role in financial markets, yet investors often disagree about the economy's future. This disagreement has long been viewed as a potential driver of asset prices, but it remains unclear whether it reflects mispricing or a priced source of risk. We address this...

This study examines the momentum effect in the returns of factor premia representing a broad set of stock market strategies. Using cross-sectional and time-series tests, we investigate the performance persistence of market, value, size, momentum, low-risk, and quality premia within a sample of...

Taking the perspective of international asset allocation, this paper tests if predictive regressions conditional on time-series and cross-sectional information can improve forecasts of stock index returns. We use different current price-to-fundamental ratios as predictors and condition the...

Buying profitable, undervalued stocks and shorting unprofitable, overvalued stocks yields significant return differentials in North America, Europe, Japan, and Asia. Using data from 1991-2016, we test Greenblatt's (2006) “Magic Formula” (MF) and find that a modified MF which uses gross...

In this study, we examine how idiosyncratic risk is correlated with a wide array of anomalies, including asset growth, book-to-market, investment-to-assets, momentum, net stock issues, size, and total accruals, in international equity markets. We use zero-cost trading strategy and multifactor...

In this paper, we examine size, value, and momentum patterns in the stock returns of four emerging market regions - Latin America, EMEA, Asia, and BRIC. We document a strong and highly significant value effect, and a strong but less significant momentum effect. Substantial value and momentum...