We investigate the relative importance of various bankruptcy predictors commonly used in the existing literature by applying a variable selection technique, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), to a comprehensive bankruptcy database. Over the 1980–2009 period, LASSO...

Using options-implied variance, a forward-looking measure of conditional variance, we revisit the debate on the idiosyncratic risk-return relation. In both cross-sectional (for individual stocks) and time-series (for the market index) regressions, we find a negative relation between...

In this paper, I provide new evidence of the out-of-sample predictability of stock returns. In particular, I find that the consumption-wealth ratio in conjunction with a measure of aggregate stock market volatility exhibits substantial out-of-sample forecasting power for excess stock market...

There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the apparent weak or negative relation between risk (conditional variance) and return (expected returns) in the aggregate stock market. We develop and estimate an empirical model based on the ICAPM to investigate this relation. Our primary...

Average idiosyncratic stock volatility forecasts the bilateral exchange rates of the US dollar against major foreign currencies in and out of sample. The US dollar tends to appreciate after an increase in US idiosyncratic volatility. Similarly, ceteris paribus, German and Japanese idiosyncratic...

Consistent with the post-1962 US evidence by Ang et al. [Ang, A., Hodrick, R., Xing Y., Zhang, X., 2006. The cross-section of volatility and expected returns. Journal of Finance 51, 259-299], we find that stocks with high idiosyncratic variance (IV) have low CAPM-adjusted expected returns in...

Daily data and component GARCH (CGARCH) models strongly support a positive risk-return relation, in contrast to previous international results. Long-run volatility appears to be important in determining the conditional equity premium, but the evidence might be spurious.