Estimation and testing of factor models in asset pricing requires choosing a set of test assets. The choice of test assets determines how well different factor risk premia can be identified: if only few assets are exposed to a factor, that factor is weak, which makes standard estimation and...

We propose a three-pass method to estimate the risk premia of observable factors in a linear asset pricing model, which is valid even when the observed factors are just a subset of the true factors that drive asset prices or they are measured with error. We show that the risk premium of a factor...

We propose a model-selection method to systematically evaluate the contribution to asset pricing of any new factor, above and beyond what a high-dimensional set of existing factors explains. Our methodology explicitly accounts for potential model-selection mistakes that produce a bias due to the...