We examine the pricing of aggregate volatility risk in the cross-section of stock returns. Consistent with theory, we … find that stocks with high sensitivities to innovations in aggregate volatility have low average returns. In addition, we … find that stocks with high idiosyncratic volatility relative to the Fama and French (1993) model have abysmally low average …

Stocks with recent past high idiosyncratic volatility have low future average returns around the world. Across 23 … developed markets, the difference in average returns between the extreme quintile portfolios sorted on idiosyncratic volatility …, and higher moments. There is strong covariation in the low returns to high-idiosyncratic-volatility stocks across …