Economists have long recognized that investors care differently about downside losses versus upside gains. Agents who place greater weight on downside risk demand additional compensation for holding stocks with high sensitivities to downside market movements. We show that the cross-section of...

Stocks with greater downside risk, which is measured by higher correlations conditional on downside moves of the market, have higher returns. After controlling for the market beta, the size effect and the book-to-market effect, the average rate of return on stocks with the greatest downside risk...

Downside return risk, or the covariance between stock returns and the market in bad states, performs significantly better compared to the single factor CAPM model. I construct a general equilibrium model and show that the same holds using firm policies rather than stock returns. Specifically,...