Risk and Return: A New Look

Burton G. Malkiel

No 700, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: One of the best documented propositions in the field of finance is that, on average, investors have received higher rates of return on in- vestment securities for bearing greater risk. This paper looks at the historical evidence regarding risk and return, explains the fundamentals of portfolio and asset pricing theory, and then goes on to take a new look at the relationship between risk and return using some unexplored risk measures that seem to capture quite closely the actual risks being valued in the market. The paper concludes that the best single risk proxy is not the traditional beta calculation but rather the dispersion of analysts' forecasts. Companies for which there is broad consensus with respect to future earnings and dividends seem to be less risky (and hence have lower expected returns) than companies for which there is little agreement among security analysts. It is possible to interpret this result as contradicting modern asset pricing theory, which suggests that total variability per se will not be relevant for valuation. As is shown in the paper, how- ever, this dispersion of forecasts could well result from different companies being particularly susceptible to systematic risk elements and thus the dispersion measure may be the best individual proxy available to capture the variety of systematic risk elements to which securities are subject.

Date: 1981-06
Note: ME
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published as Malkiel, Burton G. "Risk and Return: A New Look." The Changing Roles of Debt and Equity in Financing U.S. Capital Formation, edited by Benjamin Friedman, pp. 27-45. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Published as Risk and Return: A New Look , Burton G. Malkiel. in The Changing Roles of Debt and Equity in Financing U.S. Capital Formation , Friedman. 1982

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w0700.pdf (application/pdf)

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:nbr:nberwo:0700

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w0700

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).