The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.
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Search results: 6.
A Critique of the Stochastic Discount Factor Methodology
Published: 12/17/2002 | DOI: 10.1111/0022-1082.00145
Raymond Kan, Guofu Zhou
In this paper, we point out that the widely used stochastic discount factor (SDF) methodology ignores a fully specified model for asset returns. As a result, it suffers from two potential problems when asset returns follow a linear factor model. The first problem is that the risk premium estimate from the SDF methodology is unreliable. The second problem is that the specification test under the SDF methodology has very low power in detecting misspecified models. Traditional methodologies typically incorporate a fully specified model for asset returns, and they can perform substantially better than the SDF methodology.
Two‐Pass Tests of Asset Pricing Models with Useless Factors
Published: 05/06/2003 | DOI: 10.1111/0022-1082.00102
Raymond Kan, Chu Zhang
In this paper we investigate the properties of the standard two‐pass methodology of testing beta pricing models with misspecified factors. In a setting where a factor is useless, defined as being independent of all the asset returns, we provide theoretical results and simulation evidence that the second‐pass cross‐sectional regression tends to find the beta risk of the useless factor priced more often than it should. More surprisingly, this misspecification bias exacerbates when the number of time series observations increases. Possible ways of detecting useless factors are also examined.
Pricing Model Performance and the Two‐Pass Cross‐Sectional Regression Methodology
Published: 02/15/2013 | DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12035
RAYMOND KAN, CESARE ROBOTTI, JAY SHANKEN
Over the years, many asset pricing studies have employed the sample cross‐sectional regression (CSR) R2 as a measure of model performance. We derive the asymptotic distribution of this statistic and develop associated model comparison tests, taking into account the impact of model misspecification on the variability of the CSR estimates. We encounter several examples of large R2 differences that are not statistically significant. A version of the intertemporal capital asset pricing model (CAPM) exhibits the best overall performance, followed by the Fama–French three‐factor model. Interestingly, the performance of prominent consumption CAPMs is sensitive to variations in experimental design.
Tests of the Relations Among Marketwide Factors, Firm‐Specific Variables, and Stock Returns Using a Conditional Asset Pricing Model
Published: 12/01/1996 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1996.tb05230.x
JIA HE, RAYMOND KAN, LILIAN NG, CHU ZHANG
In this article we generalize Harvey's (1989) empirical specification of conditional asset pricing models to allow for both time‐varying covariances between stock returns and marketwide factors and time‐varying reward‐to‐covariabilities. The model is then applied to examine the effects of firm size and book‐to‐market equity ratios. We find that the traditional asset pricing model with commonly used factors can only explain a small portion of the stock returns predicted by firm size and book‐to‐market equity ratios. The results indicate that allowing time‐varying covariances and time‐varying reward‐to‐covariabilities does little to salvage the traditional asset pricing models.
A Rejoinder
Published: 06/01/1993 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.1993.tb04743.x
Nai‐Fu Chen, Raymond Kan, Merton H. Miller