IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v32y2019i7p2850-2889..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Resurrecting the Size Effect: Firm Size, Profitability Shocks, and Expected Stock Returns

Author

Listed:
  • Kewei Hou
  • Mathijs A van Dijk
  • Laura StarksEditor

Abstract

Many studies report that the size effect in the cross-section of stock returns disappeared after the early 1980s. This paper shows that its disappearance can be attributed to negative shocks to the profitability of small firms and positive shocks to big firms. After adjusting for the price impact of profitability shocks, we find a robust size effect in the cross-section of expected returns after the early 1980s. Our results highlight the importance of in-sample cash-flow shocks in understanding cross-sectional return predictability.Received April 2, 2014; editorial decision August 6, 2018 by Editor Laura Starks.

Suggested Citation

  • Kewei Hou & Mathijs A van Dijk & Laura StarksEditor, 2019. "Resurrecting the Size Effect: Firm Size, Profitability Shocks, and Expected Stock Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(7), pages 2850-2889.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:32:y:2019:i:7:p:2850-2889.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhy104
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hendershott, Terrence & Livdan, Dmitry & Rösch, Dominik, 2020. "Asset pricing: A tale of night and day," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(3), pages 635-662.
    2. Lin, Qi & Lin, Xi, 2019. "Expected profitability and the cross-section of stock returns," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 1-1.
    3. Daye Li & Tianyang Li & Kefu Yi & Yitong Liu, 2022. "Size effect and the measurement of firm size," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(4), pages 894-905, June.
    4. Bao, Jack & Hou, Kewei & Zhang, Shaojun, 2023. "Systematic default and return predictability in the stock and bond markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(3), pages 349-377.
    5. Yin, Libo & Liao, Huiyi, 2021. "Big is brilliant: Understanding the Chinese size effect through profitability shocks," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    6. Jansen, Maarten & Swinkels, Laurens & Zhou, Weili, 2021. "Anomalies in the China A-share market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    7. Naresh Bansal & Robert A. Connolly & Chris Stivers, 2022. "Beta and size equity premia following a high‐VIX threshold," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(8), pages 1491-1517, August.
    8. Peter S. Schmidt & Urs von Arx & Andreas Schrimpf & Alexander F. Wagner & Andreas Ziegler, 2019. "Common risk factors in international stock markets," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 33(3), pages 213-241, September.
    9. Qi Lin, 2020. "Idiosyncratic momentum and the cross‐section of stock returns: Further evidence," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 26(3), pages 579-627, June.
    10. Zhi Su & Danni Wu & Zhenkun Zhou & Junran Wu & Libo Yin, 2023. "The Impact of Customer Online Satisfaction on Stock Returns: Evidence from the E-commerce Reviews in China," Papers 2306.12119, arXiv.org.
    11. Cheema, Muhammad A. & Chiah, Mardy & Zhong, Angel, 2021. "Resurrecting the size effect in Japan: Firm size, profitability shocks, and expected stock returns," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    12. Wan, Die & Yang, Teng & Yang, Xiaoguang, 2021. "IPO relative difficulty, M&A option and size effect," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    13. Guo, Laite, 2023. "Two faces of the size effect," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:32:y:2019:i:7:p:2850-2889.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.