We propose an investment-momentum strategy of buying past winners with low investment and selling past losers with high investment, which exploits simultaneously two dimensions of market inefficiencies. The new strategy generates twice the monthly returns earned by either the price momentum or...

Using U.S. state-level labor protection law as an exogenous shock, we find that the adoption ofthe law alleviates the wages pressure on highly leveraged firms, primarily due to employees’improved job security offered by the law. Particularly, our finding is more pronounced forfinancially...

Employment growth (EG) is likely related to liquidity fundamentals of investment opportunities, firm health, and information environment. This, in turn, implies that liquidity risk may play a role in explaining the relation between employment growth and stock returns. We explain the link between...

Growth opportunity bias (GOB), measured as the difference between market and fundamental values of a firm's growth opportunity, has an ability to predict future stock returns. In the portfolio sort, downward-biased GOB firms earn higher returns than upward-biased GOB firms, which is unexplained...

In this paper, we investigate the value versus growth strategies from the perspective of stochastic dominance. Using half century US data on value and growth stocks, we find strong evidence that value stocks stochastically dominate growth stocks in all three-order of stochastic dominance...

As opposed to the “low beta low risk” convention, we show that low beta stocks are illiquid and exposed to high liquidity risk. After adjusting for liquidity risk, low beta stocks no longer outperform high beta stocks. Although investors who “bet against beta” earn a significant beta...

We study, using the idea of stochastic dominance, the long-run post merger stock performance of UK acquiring firms. We compare performance by using the entire distribution of returns rather than only the mean as in traditional event studies. Our main results are as follows: First, we find that,...

Examining a unique panel dataset of 22,076 firm-year observations for China's coalmining industry, we find that a firm's leverage significantly determines its coalmining fatality. We show, specifically, that leverage reduces a firm's safety investment and, hence, causes more fatalities. Our...

Labor productivity, measured as the industry-standardized ratio of sales to number of employees, has an ability to predict average stock returns. In the portfolio sort, firms with high labor productivity earn higher expected returns than those with low productivity. The difference in returns is...

Asset turnover, an inside component of profitability in the Dupont analysis, has an ability to predict average stock returns. In the portfolio sort, firms with high asset turnover earn high expected returns, which is unexplained by risk-adjusted asset pricing models. In the cross-section, asset...