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Risk, uncertainty, and expected returns

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  • Turan G. Bali
  • Hao Zhou

Abstract

A consumption-based asset pricing model with risk and uncertainty implies that the time-varying exposures of equity portfolios to the market and uncertainty factors carry positive risk premiums. The empirical results from the size, book-to-market, and industry portfolios as well as individual stocks indicate that the conditional covariances of equity portfolios (individual stocks) with market and uncertainty predict the time series and cross-sectional variation in stock returns. We find that equity portfolios that are highly correlated with economic uncertainty proxied by the variance risk premium (VRP) carry a significant premium relative to portfolios that are uncorrelated or lowly correlated with VRP. The insignificant alpha estimates indicate that the conditional asset pricing model proposed in the paper also explains the industry, size, and value premiums.

Suggested Citation

  • Turan G. Bali & Hao Zhou, 2011. "Risk, uncertainty, and expected returns," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2011-45, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2011-45
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    Cited by:

    1. Peter Christoffersen & Xuhui (Nick) Pan, 2014. "Equity Portfolio Management Using Option Price Information," CREATES Research Papers 2015-05, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    2. Christoffersen, Peter & Pan, Xuhui (Nick), 2018. "Oil volatility risk and expected stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 5-26.
    3. Amélie Charles & Olivier Darné & Zakaria Moussa, 2014. "The sensitivity of Fama-French factors to economic uncertainty," Working Papers hal-01015702, HAL.
    4. Guo, Hui & Qiu, Buhui, 2014. "Options-implied variance and future stock returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 93-113.
    5. Stefanescu, Razvan & Dumitriu, Ramona, 2016. "Particularitǎţi ale evoluţiei variabilelor financiare [Some particularities of the financial variables evolution]," MPRA Paper 73481, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 02 Sep 2016.
    6. Bali, Turan G. & Brown, Stephen J. & Caglayan, Mustafa O., 2014. "Macroeconomic risk and hedge fund returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 1-19.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    capital asset pricing model; Risk - Mathematical models; Uncertainty;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • C13 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Estimation: General

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