Price of Regulations: Regulatory Costs and the Cross-section of Stock Returns

Baris Ince and Han Ozsoylev

The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, 2024, vol. 14, issue 3, 381-427

Abstract: Regulations introduce significant fixed costs and add to operating leverage. Fixed regulatory costs that contribute to operating leverage should generate a risk premium. To explore whether such a premium exists, we introduce a measure of “regulatory operating leverage” that reflects the importance of fixed regulatory costs in a firm’s cost structure. Regulatory operating leverage predicts stock returns in the cross-section, and a zero-cost high-low regulatory operating leverage strategy generates positive and significant risk-adjusted return. Finally, the impact of regulatory operating leverage on returns is due to the (systematic) risk contribution of fixed regulatory costs.

Keywords: G12; G18; G28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rapstu/raae001 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:rasset:v:14:y:2024:i:3:p:381-427.

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Asset Pricing Studies is currently edited by Zhiguo He

More articles in The Review of Asset Pricing Studies from Society for Financial Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().