We test whether the alpha of an investment relative to one’s existing portfolio can be used to improve out-of-sample performance (Sharpe ratio; Four-factor alpha). For the period 20002014, we confirm this for the Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund and the Growth and Small Index Fund, which we extend by adding various Exchange Traded Funds. If one considers that our baseline funds may be proxies of the...

We apply the Consumption-based Asset Pricing Model (CCAPM) of the finance literature to study the risk and return of household business assets in developing economies. Using monthly panel data from a household survey in rural Thailand, we find that higher exposure to aggregate, non-diversifiable risk, as measured by household beta or the co-movement of the return of the individual household ent...

This study documents the asset pricing mechanism of Sharīʿah compliant securities listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange. We select the CAPM market model to test for the impact in variations of stock returns on a sample of Sharīʿah-compliant companies on ten years monthly data (2001-10). We first test the basic CAPM (Capital Asset Pricing Model) and its modified form known as the Sharīʿah-complia...

We study the interplay between corporate liquidity and asset reallocation. Our model shows that financially distressed firms are acquired by liquid firms in their industries even in the absence of operational synergies. We call these transactions ‘‘liquidity mergers,’’ since their purpose is to reallocate liquidity to firms that are otherwise inefficiently terminated. We show that liquidity mer...

longer follow. The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is an elegant theory. With the aid of some simplifying assumptions, it comes to dramatic conclusions about practical matters, such as how to choose an investment portfolio, how to forecast the expected return of a security or asset class, how to price a new security, or how to price risky assets in a merger or acquisition. The CAPM starts wi...

We price moneyness-based portfolio returns on the LIBOR futures options in an Intertemporal CAPM framework as an extension of the pricing kernel approach. In contrast to existing studies for pricing index options, our results show that only the real interest rate is significant in the pricing kernel for LIBOR options. The polynomial pricing kernel with linear interpretation outperforms the iso-...

We argue that the empirical evidence against the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) based on stock returns does not invalidate its use for estimating the cost of capital for projects in making capital budgeting decisions. Because stocks are backed not only by projects in place, but also by the options to modify current projects and undertake new ones, the expected returns on stocks need not sat...

We analyze the risk characteristics and the valuation of assets in an economy in which the investment opportunity set is described by the real interest rate and the maximum Sharpe ratio. It is shown that, holding constant the beta of the underlying cash flow, the beta of a security is a function of the maturity of the cash flow. For parameter values estimated from U.S. data, the security beta i...

In Merton (1981; hereafter referred to as Part I), one of us developed a basic model of markettiming forecasts where the forecaster predicts when stocks will outperform bonds and when bonds will outperform stocks but does not predict the magnitude of the superior performance. In that analysis, it was shown that the pattern of returns from successful market timing has an isomorphic correspondenc...