Only those high B/M firms that have decreased in size earn the value premium. These firms follow conservative investment policies, while those high B/M firms that do not earn the value premium generate low cash flows. This difference explains why HML is redundant in some asset pricing models...

Book value of equity consists of two economically different components: retained earnings and contributed capital. We predict that book-to-market strategies work because the retained earnings component of the book value of equity includes the accumulation and, hence, the averaging of past...

Stocks tend to earn high or low returns relative to other stocks every year in the same month (Heston and Sadka 2008). We show these seasonalities are balanced out by seasonal reversals: a stock that has a high expected return relative to other stocks in one month has a low expected return...