We propose a conditional model of asset returns in the presence of common factors and downside risk. Specifically, we generalize existing latent factor models in three ways: we show how to estimate the threshold which identifies the 'disappointment' event triggering the bad state of the world; we...

Hundreds of papers and hundreds of factors attempt to explain the cross-section of expected returns. Given this extensive data mining, it does not make any economic or statistical sense to use the usual significance criteria for a newly discovered factor, e.g., a t-ratio greater than 2.0....

We study the problem of detecting structural instability of factor strength in asset pricing models for financial returns. We allow for strong and weaker factors, in which the sum of squared betas grows at a rate equal to and slower than the number of test assets, respectively: this growth rate...

This paper develops a dynamic portfolio selection model incorporating economic uncertainty for business cycles. It is assumed that the financial market at each point in time is defined by a hidden Markov model, which is characterized by the overall equity market returns and volatility. The risk...

Correlation models, such as Constant Conditional Correlation (CCC) GARCH model or Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) GARCH model, play a crucial role in forecasting Value-at-Risk (VaR) or Expected Shortfall (ES). The additional inclusion of constant correlation tests into correlation models...

We utilize Bayesian model averaging to estimate a stochastic discount factor (SDF) for single-stock options. A Bayesian model averaging SDF outperforms reduced-form benchmark models in-sample and out-of-sample in pricing option return anomalies and portfolios. We document that the SDF is dense...

We develop a finite-sample procedure to test for mean-variance efficiency and spanning without imposing any parametric assumptions on the distribution of model disturbances. In so doing, we provide an exact distribution-free method to test uniform linear restrictions in multivariate linear...

Portfolio sorting is ubiquitous in the empirical finance literature, where it has been widely used to identify pricing anomalies in different asset classes. Despite the popularity of portfolio sorting, little attention has been paid to the statistical properties of the procedure or to the...

We evaluate the use of Generalized Empirical Likelihood (GEL) estimators in portfolio efficiency tests for asset pricing models in the presence of conditional information. Estimators from GEL family present some optimal statistical properties, such as robustness to misspecification and better...

Beta-sorted portfolios - portfolios comprised of assets with similar covariation to selected risk factors - are a popular tool in empirical finance to analyze models of (conditional) expected returns. Despite their widespread use, little is known of their statistical properties in contrast to...