The concept of risk is central to strategy research and practice. Yet, the expected positive association between risk and return, familiar from financial markets, is elusive. Measuring risk as the variance of a series of accounting-based returns, Bowman obtained the puzzling result of a negative association between risk and mean return. This finding, known as the Bowman paradox, has spawned a remarkable number of publications, and various explanations have been suggested. The present paper contributes to this literature by showing that skewness of individual firms’ return distributions has a considerable spurious effect on the mean-variance relationship. I devise a method to disentangle true and spurious effects, illustrate it using simulations, and apply it to empirical data. It turns out that the size of the spurious effect is such that, on average, it explains the larger part of the observed negative relationship. My results might thus help to reconcile mean-variance approaches to risk-return analysis with other, ex-ante, approaches. In concluding, I show that the analysis of skewness is linked to all three streams of literature devoted to explaining the Bowman paradox.
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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number
6538.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C81 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Microeconomic Data G39 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Other M29 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Business Economics - - - Other
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