Japanese stock returns are even more closely related to their book-to-market ratios than are their U.S. counterparts, and thus provide a good setting for testing whether the return premia associated with these characteristics arise because the characteristics are proxies for covariance with...

This paper evaluates various explanations for the profitability of momentum strategies documented in Jegadeesh and Titman (1993). The evidence indicates that momentum profits have continued in the 1990's suggesting that the original results were not a product of data snooping bias. The paper...

Firm size and book-to-market ratios are both highly correlated with the returns of common stocks. Fama and French (1993) have argued that the association between these firm characteristics and their stock returns arises because size and book-to-market ratios are proxies for non-diversifiable...

We present a dynamic model that links characteristic-based return predictability to systematic factors that determine the evolution of firm fundamentals. In the model, an economy-wide disruption process reallocates profits from existing businesses to new projects and thus generates a source of...

Socially responsible (SR) institutions tend to focus more on the ESG performance and less on quantitative signals of value. Consistent with this difference in focus, we find that SR institutions react less to quantitative mispricing signals. Our evidence suggests that the increased focus on ESG...

Firms that substantially increase capital investments subsequently achieve negative benchmark-adjusted returns. The negative abnormal capital investment/return relation is shown to be stronger for firms that have greater investment discretion, i.e., firms with higher cash flows and lower debt...

We decompose stock returns into components attributable to tangible and intangible information. A firm's tangible return is the component of its return attributable to fundamental accounting-performance information, and its intangible return is the component which is orthogonal to this...

We find that accounting ratios (asset and sales growth, profitability, and equity dilution) that predict stock returns are associated with errors in analyst long-term growth forecasts. Specifically, accounting information that is associated with favorable long-term growth forecasts tends to...

Listed Chinese companies can issue A-shares that are held mainly by domestic investors and B-shares that are held mainly by foreign investors. Although these twin shares have identical cash flow rights and are traded in the same location, A-shares are almost always priced higher than B-shares....