Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show that multivariate t -distribution assumption provides a better description of stock return data than multivariate normality assumption. Design/methodology/approach The EM algorithm is applied to solve the statistical estimation problem almost...

This paper characterizes the forces that determine time-variation in expected international asset returns. We offer a number of innovations. By using the latent factor technique, we do not have to prespecify the sources of risk. We solve for the latent premiums and characterize their...

Since Black, Jensen, and Scholes (1972) and Fama and MacBeth (1973), the two-pass cross-sectional regression (CSR) methodology has become the most popular tool for estimating and testing beta asset pricing models. In this paper, we focus on the case in which simple regression betas are used as...

Since Black, Jensen, and Scholes (1972) and Fama and MacBeth (1973), the two-pass cross-sectional regression (CSR) methodology has become the most popular approach for estimating and testing asset pricing models. Statistical inference with this method is typically conducted under the assumption...

In this paper, we consider social status, the spirit of capitalism, fiscal policies, and asset pricing in a stochastic model of growth. With specific assumptions on the production technology, preferences, and stochastic shocks, we derive the explicit solutions to the growth rates of consumption...

This paper introduces a new class of utility functions---the power risk aversion. It is shown that the CRRA and CARA utility functions are both in this class. The implications of the PRA utility functions are explored in the context of growth theory. In particular, it is found that economies...