This paper derives explicit expressions for the asymptotic variances of the maximum likelihood and continuously updated GMM estimators under potentially misspecified models. The proposed misspecification-robust variance estimators allow the researcher to conduct valid inference on the model...

This paper studies some seemingly anomalous results that arise in possibly misspecified and unidentified linear asset-pricing models estimated by maximum likelihood and one-step generalized method of moments (GMM). Strikingly, when useless factors (that is, factors that are independent of the...

We show that in misspecified models with useless factors (for example, factors that are independent of the returns on the test assets), the standard inference procedures tend to erroneously conclude, with high probability, that these irrelevant factors are priced and the restrictions of the...

We discuss the impact of different formulations of asset pricing models on the outcome of specification tests that are performed using excess returns. It is generally believed that when only excess returns are used for testing asset pricing models, the mean of the stochastic discount factor...

We provide an in-depth analysis of the theoretical and statistical properties of the Hansen-Jagannathan (HJ) distance that incorporates a no-arbitrage constraint. We show that for stochastic discount factors (SDF) that are spanned by the returns on the test assets, testing the equality of HJ...