Using hundreds of significant anomalies as testing portfolios, this paper compares the performance of major empirical asset pricing models. The q-factor model and a closely related five-factor model are the two best performing models among a long array of models. The q-factor model outperforms...

Using Indian bank-level data, we examine the cross-sectional returns predictability for banking stocks in view of the distinct industry parameters prevalent in the financial services space. We find the existence of abnormal returns in banking stocks. We also observe that the celebrated...

We examine the pricing performance of various measures of dealer risk appetite. We construct a novel measure of risk appetite that captures the provision of leverage to the clients of broker-dealer firms. We also construct a factor mimicking portfolio that tracks shocks to the leverage of...

Society needs financial intermediaries to create orderly efficient markets, to have informative prices, and to best allocate resources. However, when trust is eroded with high volatility and unpredictable events, financial crises are amplified and prices are distorted as financial intermediaries...

We investigate intermediary asset pricing theories empirically and find strong support for models that have intermediary leverage as the relevant state variable. A parsimonious model that uses detrended dealer leverage as a price-of-risk variable, and innovations to dealer leverage as a pricing...

We decompose total variance into its bad and good components and measure the premia associated with their fluctuations using stock and option data from a large cross-section of firms. The total variance risk premium (VRP) represents the premium paid to insure against fluctuations in bad variance...

Financial intermediaries trade frequently in many markets using sophisticated models. Their marginal value of wealth should therefore provide a more informative stochastic discount factor (SDF) than that of a representative consumer. Guided by theory, we use shocks to the leverage of securities...

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...

We study the effect of growth in firms’ balance sheets on stock returns by decomposing asset growth into two components, one that captures real investment growth and one that captures accounting distortions and/or reduced efficiency. We show that these components play significant and...

We show that nearly 100 percent of the U.S. equity premium is earned over a window around the opening hours of European markets when U.S. cash markets are closed. We explore two potential complementary explanations. First, consistent with predictions from dealer inventory risk models, we find...