We investigate the cross-sectional relationship between stock returns and a number of measures of option-implied beta. Using portfolio analysis, we show that the method proposed by Buss and Vilkov (2012) leads to a stronger relationship between implied beta and stock returns than other...

The proliferation of anomalies and the resulting `factor zoo' has challenged finance researchers to identify firm characteristics that are genuinely related to the cross-sectional variation in expected stock returns. We address this challenge using a Bayesian ensemble of trees approach, namely,...

This study investigates the structural relationship between illiquidity and ex-ante returns in the German stock market over time. In line with other authors, we show that illiquidity is still a significant factor, but has had a weakened impact in more recent times. When considering structural...

This paper introduces a real-time, continuous measure of national sentiment that is language-free and thus comparable globally: the positivity of songs that individuals choose to listen to. This is a direct measure of mood that does not pre-specify certain mood-affecting events nor assume the...

This paper finds evidence that stock returns vary with the physical climate change exposure of firms in a predictable manner. We construct measures of exposures to physical climate changes at the firm level, and find that firms with high climate change exposures experience lower future...

This paper examines whether deep/machine learning can help find any statistical and/or economic evidence of out-of-sample bond return predictability when real-time, instead of fully-revised, macro variables are taken as predictors. First, when using pure real-time macro information alone, we...

This article sheds light on the question of whether asset growth are a strong candidate for stock return prediction in emerging markets. We test for the firm level asset investment effects in stock return by examining the relationship between asset growth rates and subsequent stock returns....

Do more active hedge fund managers generate higher returns than their less active peers? We attempt to answer this question. Using Kalman Filter techniques, we estimate the risk exposure dynamics of a large sample of live and dead equity long-short hedge funds. These estimates are then used to...

We show that the degree of dispersion and asymmetry of analysts' earnings forecasts is related to future stock returns. When skewness is negative, future returns are decreasing in the degree of dispersion of analysts' earnings forecasts; when skewness is positive, future returns are increasing...

Prior studies find that a strategy that buys high-beta stocks and sells low-beta stocks has a significantly negative unconditional Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) alpha, such that it appears to pay to "bet against beta." We show, however, that the conditional beta for the high-minus-low beta...