We investigate the impact of product market competition on firms' systematic risk. Using a measure of total product market similarity, we document a strong negative link between market power and market betas. There is a more than threefold increase in the effect during the most recent...

Researchers and practitioners employ a variety of time-series processes to forecast betas, using either short-memory models or implicitly imposing infinite memory. We find that both approaches are inadequate: beta factors show consistent long-memory properties. For the vast majority of stocks,...

Researchers and practitioners face many choices when estimating an asset's sensitivities toward risk factors, i.e., betas. We study the effect of different data sampling frequencies, forecast adjustments, and model combinations for beta estimation. Using the entire U.S. stock universe and a...

We study the term structure of variance (total risk), systematic and idiosyncratic risk. Consistent with the expectations hypothesis, we find that, for the entire market, the slope of the term structure of variance is mainly informative about the path of future variance. Thus, there is little...

We study factor pricing and market integration across major asset classes. Factor models specializing in one asset class have limited pricing power for other asset classes. Thus, we reject perfect market integration. However, an optimal integrated factor model across asset classes can...

This paper examines the estimation of global and local betas for a large set of Developed and Emerging international markets. Estimators based on daily data clearly outperform those based on monthly or quarterly data. For global and local market betas, the optimal window length is at roughly 24...

Researchers and practitioners employ a variety of time-series processes to forecast betas, using either short-memory models or implicitly imposing infinite memory. We find that both approaches are inadequate: beta factors show consistent long-memory properties. For the vast majority of stocks,...

When using high-frequency data, the conditional CAPM can explain asset-pricing anomalies. Using conditional betas based on daily data, the model works reasonably well for a recent sample period. However, it fails to explain the size anomaly as well as 3 out of 6 of the anomaly component excess...

We conduct a comprehensive comparison of market beta estimation techniques. We study the performance of several historical, time-series model, and option implied estimators for estimating realized market beta. Thereby, we find the hybrid methodology of Buss and Vilkov (2012) to consistently...

A stock's exposure to systematic risk factors is surrounded by substantial uncertainty. This beta uncertainty is both economically and statistically significantly priced in the cross-section of stock returns. Stocks with high beta uncertainty substantially under-perform those with low beta...