IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/riibaf/v63y2022ics0275531922001611.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Identifying proxies for risk-free assets: Evidence from the zero-beta capital asset pricing model

Author

Listed:
  • He, Zhen
  • O’Connor, Fergal
  • Thijssen, Jacco

Abstract

This research offers the first analysis of whether gold, T-bills, Overnight Index Swaps (OIS) or Interbank Offered Rates (IBOR) can be used as proxy for the risk-free asset in the UK, US, China, Japan and India. Using Blacks (1972) Zero-Beta CAPM we apply Wald and Likelihood Ratio Tests to assess whether gold, T-bills, OIS or IBOR qualify as Zero-Beta or risk free assets against each company in FTSE 350, S&P 500, SSE 180, NIKKEI 225 and SENSEX. We find that gold is a proxy for the risk-free asset in the UK and China; T-bills are a proxy for risk-free assets in Japan and IBOR is a proxy for the risk-free rate in China. None qualify as risk free for the US market. According to our results, there is no universal risk-free asset for the UK, US, China, Japan and India.

Suggested Citation

  • He, Zhen & O’Connor, Fergal & Thijssen, Jacco, 2022. "Identifying proxies for risk-free assets: Evidence from the zero-beta capital asset pricing model," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:riibaf:v:63:y:2022:i:c:s0275531922001611
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101775
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0275531922001611
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ribaf.2022.101775?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
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lloyd, Simon P., 2020. "Estimating nominal interest rate expectations: Overnight indexed swaps and the term structure," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    2. Yoshino, Joe Akira & Santos, Edson Bastos e, 2009. "Is the CAPM Dead or Alive in the Brazilian Market?," Review of Applied Economics, Lincoln University, Department of Financial and Business Systems, vol. 5(1-2), pages 1-16, March.
    3. Nippani, Srinivas & Smith, Stanley D., 2010. "The increasing default risk of US Treasury securities due to the financial crisis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 2472-2480, October.
    4. Nippani, Srinivas & Liu, Pu & Schulman, Craig T., 2001. "Are Treasury Securities Free of Default?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(2), pages 251-265, June.
    5. Shanken, Jay, 1985. "Multivariate tests of the zero-beta CAPM," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 327-348, September.
    6. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1996. "The CAPM Is Wanted, Dead or Alive," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(5), pages 1947-1958, December.
    7. Brian M. Lucey & Charles Larkin & Fergal O'Connor, 2014. "Gold markets around the world - who spills over what, to whom, when?," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(13), pages 887-892, September.
    8. He, Zhen & O'Connor, Fergal & Thijssen, Jacco, 2018. "Is gold a Sometime Safe Haven or an Always Hedge for equity investors? A Markov-Switching CAPM approach for US and UK stock indices," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 30-37.
    9. Harry Markowitz, 1952. "Portfolio Selection," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 7(1), pages 77-91, March.
    10. John Lintner, 1965. "Security Prices, Risk, And Maximal Gains From Diversification," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 20(4), pages 587-615, December.
    11. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    12. William F. Sharpe, 1964. "Capital Asset Prices: A Theory Of Market Equilibrium Under Conditions Of Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 425-442, September.
    13. Gibbons, Michael R., 1982. "Multivariate tests of financial models : A new approach," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 3-27, March.
    14. Eugene F. Fama & Kenneth R. French, 2004. "The Capital Asset Pricing Model: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(3), pages 25-46, Summer.
    15. Kapan, Tümer & Minoiu, Camelia, 2018. "Balance sheet strength and bank lending: Evidence from the global financial crisis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 35-50.
    16. Black, Fischer, 1972. "Capital Market Equilibrium with Restricted Borrowing," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 45(3), pages 444-455, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Wu, Meng-Wen & Shen, Chung-Hua & Hsu, Hsing-Hua & Chiu, Po-Hao, 2023. "Why did a bank with good governance perform worse during the financial crisis? The views of shareholder and stakeholder orientations," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fernando Rubio, 2005. "Eficiencia De Mercado, Administracion De Carteras De Fondos Y Behavioural Finance," Finance 0503028, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Jul 2005.
    2. Amit Goyal, 2012. "Empirical cross-sectional asset pricing: a survey," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 26(1), pages 3-38, March.
    3. Marie Brière & Bastien Drut & Valérie Mignon & Kim Oosterlinck & Ariane Szafarz, 2013. "Is the Market Portfolio Efficient? A New Test of Mean-Variance Efficiency when all Assets are Risky," Finance, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, vol. 34(1), pages 7-41.
    4. repec:dau:papers:123456789/9297 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Levy, Moshe & Levy, Haim, 2015. "Keeping up with the Joneses and optimal diversification," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 29-38.
    6. Bao, Te & Diks, Cees & Li, Hao, 2018. "A generalized CAPM model with asymmetric power distributed errors with an application to portfolio construction," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 611-621.
    7. Martin Lettau & Sydney Ludvigson, 2001. "Resurrecting the (C)CAPM: A Cross-Sectional Test When Risk Premia Are Time-Varying," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(6), pages 1238-1287, December.
    8. Haim Levy, 2010. "The CAPM is Alive and Well: A Review and Synthesis," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 16(1), pages 43-71, January.
    9. Sonntag, Dominik, 2018. "Die Theorie der fairen geometrischen Rendite [The Theory of Fair Geometric Returns]," MPRA Paper 87082, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Marie Brière & Bastien Drut & Valérie Mignon & Kim Oosterlinck & Ariane Szafarz, 2011. "Is the Market Portfolio Efficient? A New Test to Revisit the Roll (1977) versus Levy and Roll (2010) Controversy," Working Papers hal-04140988, HAL.
    11. Durand, Robert B. & Lan, Yihui & Ng, Andrew, 2011. "Conditional beta: Evidence from Asian emerging markets," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 130-153.
    12. Bob Korkie & Harry J. Turtle, 2002. "A Mean-Variance Analysis of Self-Financing Portfolios," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(3), pages 427-443, March.
    13. Shanken, Jay & Zhou, Guofu, 2007. "Estimating and testing beta pricing models: Alternative methods and their performance in simulations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 40-86, April.
    14. Vafai, Nima & Rakowski, David, 2024. "The sources of portfolio volatility and mutual fund performance," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    15. Kim, Soohun & Skoulakis, Georgios, 2018. "Ex-post risk premia estimation and asset pricing tests using large cross sections: The regression-calibration approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 204(2), pages 159-188.
    16. Nawazish Mirza & Saima Shahid, 2008. "Size and Value Premium inKarachi Stock Exchange," Lahore Journal of Economics, Department of Economics, The Lahore School of Economics, vol. 13(2), pages 1-26, Jul-Dec.
    17. Shanken, Jay & Weinstein, Mark I., 2006. "Economic forces and the stock market revisited," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 129-144, March.
    18. Pasaribu, Rowland Bismark Fernando, 2010. "Pemilihan Model Asset Pricing [Asset pricing model selection: Indonesian Stock Exchange]," MPRA Paper 36978, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Bradrania, Reza & Veron, Jose Francisco & Wu, Winston, 2023. "The beta anomaly and the quality effect in international stock markets," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
    20. Zhong, Angel, 2018. "Idiosyncratic volatility in the Australian equity market," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 105-125.
    21. Schuhmacher, Frank & Auer, Benjamin R., 2014. "Sufficient conditions under which SSD- and MR-efficient sets are identical," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 239(3), pages 756-763.

    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:eee:riibaf:v:63:y:2022:i:c:s0275531922001611. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ribaf .

    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.