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Professor Zipf goes to Wall Street

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  • Yannick Malevergne
  • Pedro Santa-Clara
  • Didier Sornette

Abstract

The heavy-tailed distribution of firm sizes first discovered by Zipf (1949) is one of the best established empirical facts in economics. We show that it has strong implications for asset pricing. Due to the concentration of the market portfolio when the distribution of the capitalization of firms is sufficiently heavy-tailed, an additional risk factor generically appears even for very large economies. Our two-factor model is as successful empirically as the three-factor Fama-French model.

Suggested Citation

  • Yannick Malevergne & Pedro Santa-Clara & Didier Sornette, 2009. "Professor Zipf goes to Wall Street," NBER Working Papers 15295, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15295
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    2. Frederico Belo & Jun Li & Xiaoji Lin & Xiaofei Zhao, 2017. "Labor-Force Heterogeneity and Asset Prices: The Importance of Skilled Labor," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(10), pages 3669-3709.
    3. David Chambers & Elroy Dimson & Christophe Spaenjers, 0. "Art as an Asset: Evidence from Keynes the Collector," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(3), pages 490-520.
    4. Li Gu & Dayong Huang, 2017. "The Effect of the Growth in Labor Hours per Worker on Future Stock Returns, Hiring, and Profitability," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 21(6), pages 2249-2276.
    5. Saman Banafti & Tae-Hwy Lee, 2022. "Inferential Theory for Granular Instrumental Variables in High Dimensions," Working Papers 202203, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    6. Xavier Gabaix, 2011. "The Granular Origins of Aggregate Fluctuations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(3), pages 733-772, May.
    7. Dror Y Kenett & Yoash Shapira & Asaf Madi & Sharron Bransburg-Zabary & Gitit Gur-Gershgoren & Eshel Ben-Jacob, 2011. "Index Cohesive Force Analysis Reveals That the US Market Became Prone to Systemic Collapses Since 2002," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(4), pages 1-8, April.
    8. Alles Rodrigues, Alexandre & Casalin, Fabrizio, 2022. "Factor investing in Brazil: Diversifying across factor tilts and allocation strategies," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    9. Sandro Claudio Lera & Didier Sornette, 2017. "Quantification of the evolution of firm size distributions due to mergers and acquisitions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(8), pages 1-16, August.
    10. Leopoldo S'anchez-Cant'u & Carlos Arturo Soto-Campos & Andriy Kryvko, 2016. "Evidence of Self-Organization in Time Series of Capital Markets," Papers 1604.03996, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2017.
    11. Jannati, Sima, 2020. "Geographic spillover of dominant firms’ shocks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    12. Wai Ching Poon & Gareth D. Leeves, 2017. "Research output: evidence from economics departments in the Asia-Pacific region," Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 604-620, October.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

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