 Idiosyncratic risk and the cross-section of expected stock returnsFangjian Fu Journal of Financial Economics, 2009, vol. 91, issue 1, 24-37 Abstract: Theories such as Merton [1987. A simple model of capital market equilibrium with incomplete information. Journal of Finance 42, 483-510] predict a positive relation between idiosyncratic risk and expected return when investors do not diversify their portfolio. Ang, Hodrick, Xing, and Zhang [2006. The cross-section of volatility and expected returns. Journal of Finance 61, 259-299], however, find that monthly stock returns are negatively related to the one-month lagged idiosyncratic volatilities. I show that idiosyncratic volatilities are time-varying and thus, their findings should not be used to imply the relation between idiosyncratic risk and expected return. Using the exponential GARCH models to estimate expected idiosyncratic volatilities, I find a significantly positive relation between the estimated conditional idiosyncratic volatilities and expected returns. Further evidence suggests that Ang et al.'s findings are largely explained by the return reversal of a subset of small stocks with high idiosyncratic volatilities. Keywords: Idiosyncratic; risk; Cross-sectional; returns; Time-varying; GARCH (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:91:y:2009:i:1:p:24-37 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Financial Economics is currently edited by G. William Schwert More articles in Journal of Financial Economics from Elsevier |
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