IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jfinan/v74y2019i1p281-321.html

Investment and the Cross‐Section of Equity Returns

Author

Listed:
  • GIAN LUCA CLEMENTI
  • BERARDINO PALAZZO

Abstract

The data show that, upon being hit by adverse profitability shocks, large public firms have ample latitude to divest their least productive assets, reducing the risk faced by shareholders and the returns that they are likely to demand. In the one‐factor production‐based asset pricing model, when the frictions to capital adjustment are shaped to respect the evidence on investment, the model‐generated cross‐sectional dispersion of returns is only a small fraction of that documented in the data. Our conclusions hold even when operating or labor leverage is modeled in ways shown to be promising in the extant literature.

Suggested Citation

  • Gian Luca Clementi & Berardino Palazzo, 2019. "Investment and the Cross‐Section of Equity Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(1), pages 281-321, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jfinan:v:74:y:2019:i:1:p:281-321
    DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12730
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jofi.12730
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jofi.12730?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Caldara, Dario & Iacoviello, Matteo & Molligo, Patrick & Prestipino, Andrea & Raffo, Andrea, 2020. "The economic effects of trade policy uncertainty," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 38-59.
    2. Mathias Lé & Frédéric Vinas, 2020. "The Financing of Investment: Firm Size, Asset Tangibility and the Size of Investment," Working papers 777, Banque de France.
    3. Lu Zhang, 2019. "Q-factors and Investment CAPM," NBER Working Papers 26538, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Vladimir Asriyan & Luc Laeven & Alberto Martin & Alejandro Van der Ghote & Victoria Vanasco, 2025. "Falling Interest Rates and Credit Reallocation: Lessons from General Equilibrium," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 92(4), pages 2197-2227.
    5. Muhammad Nazmul Khan, 2022. "Estimating empirical marginal adjustment cost function: a power series approach," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(6), pages 3185-3210, December.
    6. Mahdi Ebsim & Miguel Faria-e-Castro & Julian Kozlowski, 2025. "When Liquidity Matters: Firm Balance Sheets during Large Crises," Working Papers 2025-019, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 11 Mar 2026.
    7. Roberto Marfè, 2015. "Labor Rigidity and the Dynamics of the Value Premium," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 429, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    8. David, Joel M. & Schmid, Lukas & Zeke, David, 2022. "Risk-adjusted capital allocation and misallocation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 684-705.
    9. Chaderina, Maria & Weiss, Patrick & Zechner, Josef, 2022. "The maturity premium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 670-694.
    10. Bin Li, 2021. "Separating Information About Cash Flows from Information About Risk in Losses," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 3570-3595, June.
    11. Hang Bai & Erica X.N. Li & Chen Xue & Lu Zhang, 2019. "Firm-level Irreversibility," NBER Working Papers 26372, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • D92 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Intertemporal Firm Choice, Investment, Capacity, and Financing
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    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:bla:jfinan:v:74:y:2019:i:1:p:281-321. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/afaaaea.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.