According to the Sharpe-Lintner capital asset pricing model, expected rates of return on individual stocks differ only because of their different levels of non-diversifiable risk (beta). However, Fama/French (1992) show that the two variables size and book-to-market ratio capture the...

Empirical studies of open-market share repurchases in the U.S. typically find a mean abnormal return around the announcement day of about 3%. In Germany share repurchases were highly restricted before May 1998. Since then firms have repurchased shares in the open market more than 250 times....

"We study the performance of conditional asset pricing models and multifactor models in explaining the German cross-section of stock returns. We focus on several variables, which (according to previous research) are associated with market expectations on future market excess returns or business...