Risk-return tradeoff in Chinese stock markets: some recent evidence

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to pay more attention to four different research questions at least. One is that this study intends to explore the changes of the risk-return relationship over time, because the institutions and environment have changed a lot and might tend to influence the risk-return regime in the Chinese stock markets. The second question is whether there is any difference for the risk-return relationship between Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. The third question is to compare the similarities and dissimilarities of the risk-return tradeoff for different frequency data. The fourth question is to compare the explanation power of different GARCH-M type models which are all widely used in exploring the risk-return tradeoff. Design/methodology/approach - – This paper investigates the risk-return tradeoff in the Chinese emerging stock markets with a sample including daily, weekly and monthly market return series. A group of variant specifications of GARCH-M type models are used to test the risk-return tradeoff. Additionally, some diagnostic checks proposed by Engle and Ng (1993) are used in this paper, and this will help to assess the robustness of different models. Findings - – The empirical results show that the dynamic risk-return relationship is quite different between Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. A positive and statistically significant risk-return relationship is found for the daily returns in Shenzhen Stock Exchange, while the conditional mean of the stock returns is negatively related to the conditional variance in Shanghai Stock Exchange. The risk-return relationship usually becomes much weaker for the lower frequency returns in both markets. A further study with the sub-samples finds a positive and significant risk-return trade-off for both markets in the second stage after July 1, 1999. Originality/value - – This paper extends the existing related researches about the Chinese stock markets in several ways. First, this study uses a longer sample to investigate the relationship between stock returns and volatility. Second, this study estimates the returns and volatility relationship with different frequency sample data together. Third, a group of variant specifications of GARCH-M type models are used to test the risk-return tradeoff. In particular, the author employs the Component GARCH-M model which is relatively new in this line of research. Fourth, this study investigates if there is any structural break affecting the risk-return relationship in the Chinese stock markets over time.