A legislação brasileira estabelece que o Estado tem a obrigação de preservar o equilíbrio econômico financeiro das concessões de serviços públicos. Assim o Estado deve garantir que as tarifas dessas concessões sejam capazes de cobrir os seus custos operacionais e ainda ofereçam um retorno justo para os agentes privados que nelas investiram. Nas concessões de distribuição de gás natural canalizado e de energia elétrica os reguladores brasileiros optaram por aplicar uma regulação baseada em incentivos, que se inspira no modelo inglês de regulação por preço teto. Esta opção regulatória fez com que a Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica adicionasse à remuneração dos acionistas das concessionárias um prêmio de risco regulatório refletindo a diferença entre o risco das distribuidoras inglesas e o risco das norte americanas, pois as inglesas praticam uma forma de determinação de tarifas considerada mais arriscada que as norte americanas. Tal adição de retorno encontra amparo na teoria econômica, mas é questionada por estudos empíricos que mostram que a diferença entre os graus de risco do regime inglês e norte americano não é estatisticamente significativa. Nesta dissertação é testada a hipótese de que o grau de risco de mercado da regulação por preço teto é maior do que o da regulação por custo de serviço. Para tanto são usados dados de distribuidoras de gás natural e energia elétrica da Argentina, Brasil, Chile e Estados Unidos, sendo que apenas neste último país se pratica regulação por custo de serviço e nos demais é adotada a regulação por preço teto de inspiração inglesa. Os testes aqui realizados indicam que não há evidências de que o risco de mercado seja maior em países com regulação por preço-teto do que em países com regulação por custo de serviço. Mais do que isso, esta dissertação conclui que o principal determinante do diferencial entre o risco de mercado das concessionárias brasileiras e o risco de mercado das empresas norte americanas comparáveis de distribuição de energia elétrica e de gás natural é a volatilidade do índice IBOVESPA e não o modelo tarifário adotado pelos reguladores. / Brazilian Law establishes that preservation of the economic balance of utilities is an obligation of the Brazilian State. Thus the State must set tariffs that not only cover utilities operational costs but also cover its capital cost, giving a fair return for utilities investors. In tariff setting, Brazilian regulators estimate a weight average cost of capital, of which market risk is one of the components. Brazilian regulators of natural gas and electricity distribution utilities choose an incentive based model of regulation, inspired in the English regulatory model of price cap, or RPI X. This regulatory model is considered riskier than the American model of cost of service, or (fixed) rate of return regulation. Thus, the choice for a price cap model made Brazilian electricity regulator (ANEEL) add a regulatory risk premium in the equity component of WACC to incorporate the risk differential between the English and the American regulatory models. Such regulatory risk premium is validated by economic theory, but is questioned by empiric studies that show that, across many countries, the difference between the risk of English and American models are not statistically significative. This dissertation tests the hypothesis that the market risk of price cap regulation is greater than cost of service regulation. In order to test such hypothesis data from natural gas and electric energy distributors from Argentia, Brazil, Chile and United States is used. Only the latter practices cost of service regulation and all other countries adopt the english inspired price cap regualation. The tests performed indicate that there is no evidence that the market risk is greater in countries adopting price cap regulation than in countries using cost of service regulation. Moreover, this dissertation concludes that the main aspect determining the difference between market.risk of Brazilian utilities providers and American comparable natural gas end electric energy distributors is the volatility of the IBOVESPA índex in spite of the tariff model adopted by the regulators.

Det är sedan länge känt att det finns en positiv korrelation mellan risk och avkastning. Investerare och bolag kan välja mellan flera olika prissättningsmodeller för att förutspå priset på en aktie. Forskare har, med den kända enfaktormodellen CAPM som utgångspunkt, utvecklat en modell som tar hänsyn till mer än bara marknadsfaktorn. Detta resulterade i framtagandet av Fama & French-trefaktormodellen (FF3) som även inkluderar storleksfaktorn SMB samt värdefaktorn HML. Syftet med studien är att utvärdera två prissättningsmodeller, CAPM och FF3, för att kunna bedöma deras prestanda vid värdering av förväntad avkastning. Tidigare forskning, inom området för nämnda modeller, berör ofta internationella marknader samt modellernas prestanda för portföljer. Vår studie utförs på utvalda enskilda svenska aktier inkluderade på Stockholmsbörsens Large Cap för januari år 2011 till december år 2015, genom att replikera tidigare forskning gjord av Bartholdy & Peare (2005). Utvalda bolag analyseras efter regressioner för modellerna för att kunna utvärdera dessa var för sig, samt för att se om FF3 har en högre justerad förklaringsgrad än CAPM för enskilda svenska aktier. Resultatet av studien visar att både CAPM och FF3 är applicerbara för utvalda enskilda svenska aktier. Ställs FF3 i förhållande till CAPM föreligger skillnad i justerad förklaringsgrad, dock är den ytterst marginell. Sammanfattningsvis bidrar studien med kunskapen om att CAPM och FF3 går att applicera på enskilda svenska aktier, men att det inte föreligger någon större skillnad i val av dessa två modeller. / Investors and companies can choose between multiple pricing models to predict the price of shares. With the known one factor model CAPM, researchers have developed a model that consider more than just the market factor. This resulted in the creation of the Fama & French three factor model (FF3), which also includes the size factor SMB and the value factor HML. The purpose of the study is to evaluate two pricing models, CAPM and FF3, to assess their performance when evaluating expected returns. Previous research often deal with international markets and model performance of portfolios. We study selected individual Swedish shares for January 2011 to December 2015 by replicating previous research by Bartholdy & Peare (2005). Selected companies are analysed by regressions for the models to be able to evaluate these separately, and to see if FF3 has a higher degree of explanation than CAPM for individual Swedish shares. The result of the study shows that both CAPM and FF3 are applicable for selected individual Swedish shares. There is a difference in the adjusted degree of explanation between the models but it is marginal. In conclusion, the study contributes with the knowledge that CAPM and FF3 can be applied to individual Swedish shares, but there is no major difference in the choice of these two models.

[pt] Esta tese é composta por dois ensaios sobre finanças empíricas. O primeiro se concentra nos mercados de câmbio e apresenta medidas de mudanças na inclinação da estrutura de curto prazo das taxas de juros para os EUA e outros países de G10, usando contratos de futuros de 3 e 6 meses. Essas mudanças na inclinação têm impacto imediato nos retornos da moeda e também forte efeito retardado nas semanas seguintes, o que implica que as moedas são previsíveis tanto dentro quanto fora da amostra. Os investidores que condicionam na inclinação para negociar taticamente uma carteira comprada em moedas G10 contra o Dólar americano melhoram os índices de Sharpe para 0,4-0,9, em relação a 0,15 de uma estratégia de buy and hold. Uma carteira de moeda neutra em dólares que classifica as moedas dos países do G10 de acordo com a inclinação no cross-section também oferece índices de Sharpe mais altos do que outras estratégias de moeda como o carry trade. Essas descobertas são compatíveis com uma reação defasada do mercado de câmbio às informações sobre taxas de juros. O segundo ensaio propõe uma nova medida que usa apenas informações de dispersão cross-section de betas do modelo CAPM para prever retornos agregados de mercado para os EUA. Esta escolha de preditores é baseada em argumentos teóricos simples de que as medidas associadas à dispersão dos betas do CAPM, em alguns cenários, devem ser relacionadas aos retornos futuros de mercado esperados. Essas medidas de dispersão de fato prevêem o prêmio de risco de mercado em vários horizontes e fornecem alto poder preditivo dentro e fora da amostra. O R2 fora da amostra atinge até 10 porcento na frequência anual (0,7 porcento mensal) e são robustos a diferentes janelas de estimação. Ao contrário da maioria das medidas encontradas na literatura, a nossa não é baseado em preço ou valuation ratios. Nossas medidas variam com o ciclo econômico e se correlacionam com outras variáveis de previsão comumente usadas, como razões de dividendo-preço e consumo-riqueza, mas fornecem poder explicativo acima e além dos preditores padrão. Nossos resultados fornecem evidências adicionais de que a dispersão dos betas ao longo do tempo é função da variação temporal do prêmio de risco de mercado. / [en] The thesis is composed of two essays on empirical finance. The first focuses on FX markets and presents measures of interest rates shortterm structure slope changes for the US and other G10 countries using 3- and 6-month futures contracts. These changes in slopes have immediate impact on currency returns but also a strong delayed effect over the following weeks, implying that currencies are predictable both in and outof-sample. Investors that condition on slope to tactically trade a long G10 portfolio improve Sharpe ratios to 0.4-0.9, relative to 0.15 for a buy-andhold strategy. A dollar-neutral currency portfolio that sorts G10 country currencies on the cross-section slope also deliver higher Sharpe ratios than other currency strategies, such as the carry trade. These findings are compatible with delayed currency market reaction to information in interest rates. The second essay proposes a novel measure that solely use crosssectional dispersion information on CAPM betas to forecast aggregate market returns for the US. This choice of predictors is based on simple theoretical arguments that measures associated with the dispersion of CAPM betas, in some settings, should be related with expected future market returns. We find that these dispersion measures do indeed forecast market risk premium over multiple horizons and deliver high in-sample and out-of-sample predictive power: out-of-sample R2 reaches up to 10 percent at the annual frequency (0.7 percent monthly) and are robust to different estimation windows. Unlike most measures in the literature, ours is not a price- or valuation-based ratio. Our approach is also an alternative to models that use the cross-section of valuation ratios to infer the conditional market risk premium. Our measures vary with the business cycle and correlate with other commonly used forecasting variable such as dividend-price or consumption-wealth ratios, but they provide explanatory power above and beyond the standard predictors. Our findings provide additional evidence that the betas dispersion across time is a function of time varying risk premium.

This project aims to analyze Nordic companies active in the sector of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), and does this in two parts. Part I entails analyzing public companies to construct a valuation model aimed at predicting the enterprise value of private companies. Part II deals with analyzing private companies to determine if there are opportunities providing excess returns as compared to investments in public companies. In part I, a multiple regression approach is utilized to identify suitable valuation models. In doing so, it is revealed that 1-factor models provide best statistical results in terms of significance and prediction error. In descending order, in terms of prediction accuracy, these are (1) total assets, (2) turnover, (3) EBITDA, and (4) cash flow. Part II uses model (1) and finds that Nordic ICT private equity does provide opportunities for positive alphas, and that it is possible to construct portfolio strategies that increase this alpha. However, with regards to previous research, it seems as though the returns offered by the private equity market analyzed does not adequately compensate investors for the additional risks related to investing in private equity. / Det här projektet analyserar nordiska bolag aktiva inom Informations- och Kommunikationsteknologi (ICT) i två delar. Del I behandlar analys av publika bolag för att konstruera en värderingsmodell avsedd att förutsäga privata bolags enterprise value. Del II analyserar privata bolag för att undersöka huruvida det finns möjligheter att uppnå överavkastning jämfört med investeringar i publika bolag. I del I utnyttjas multipel regressionsanalys för att identifiera tillämpliga värderingsmodeller. I den processen påvisas att modeller med enbart en faktor ger bäst statistiska resultat i fråga om signifikans och förutsägelsefel. I fallande ordning, med avseende på precision i förutsägelser, är dessa modeller (1) totala tillgångar, (2) omsättning, (3) EBITDA, och (4) kassaflöde. Del II använder modell (1) och finner att den nordiska marknaden för privata ICT-bolag erbjuder möjligheter för överavkastning jämfört med motsvarande publika marknad, samt att det är möjligt att konstruera portföljstrategier som ökar avkastningen ytterligare. Dock, med hänsyn till tidigare forskning, verkar det som att de möjligheter för avkastning som går att finna på marknaden av privata bolag som undersökts inte kompenserar investerare tillräckligt för de ytterligare risker som är relaterade till investeringar i privata bolag.

För att investerare ska placera kapital mot hållbara investeringar krävs insikt om det finns en premie som valet av hållbara aktiefonder innebär eller om dessa motsvarar eller till och med överavkastar mot konventionella fonder. I denna uppsats undersöker vi hur den riskjusterade avkastningen, mätt som Jensens alpha, ser ut för hållbara och konventionella fonder. Studien undersökte 51 aktiefonder med hemvist i Sverige för åren 2017-2021 där datan samlades in från Avanza och hållbarhetsbetyg från Morningstar användes för klassificering av konventionella respektive hållbara fonder. Resultaten pekar på att hållbara aktiefonder har en riskjusterad avkastning som är 0,2 procentenheter högre än konventionella aktiefonder över hela tidsramen. Studien undersökte även förhållandet mellan riskjusterad avkastning och förvaltningsavgiften och fann ett marginellt positivt samband utifrån en regressionsanalys. Studien bidrar till forskningsområdet genom att närmare undersöka ett individuellt land till skillnad från tidigare studier och på senare årtal vilket ger en mer nutida förståelse för hållbara och konventionella aktiefonder på den svenska fondmarknaden. / For investors looking at placing their capital in sustainable equity funds, there is a need for knowledge as to how sustainable funds compare to their conventional peers. Do they demand a premium, have the same returns or even outperform? In this paper we look at the risk adjusted return, Jensen's alpha, on the Swedish fund market between the year 2017-2021 and how sustainable funds compare to conventional ones. The results indicate that sustainable funds outperform conventional funds with 0,2 percentage points over the entire time frame. The study also examined the relationship between fund fees and risk adjusted returns and found a marginal positive relationship from a regression analysis. The study contributes to the scientific field by closer examining a single country for a later time frame, giving a more contemporary understanding of sustainable and conventional funds on the Swedish fund market.

Sustainability has become a major societal trend and interest in sustainable investments has increased among investors. The purpose of this study is to investigate how sustainability affects Swedish funds' returns and risk. Since research on the impact of sustainability on funds focuses mostly on investments outside Sweden, this study has limited itself to Swedish funds to fill the gap in research. The study analyzes 67 Swedish funds during 2015-2019 using various models such as CAPM, Fama-French three-factor model and Sharpe ratio. Furthermore, the funds' sustainability is measured using Morningstar's sustainability rating. Results show no signs of linear regression between sustainability and results from different models and the results of the study are not statistically significant. Thus, the study concludes that it is not sustainability that affects risk and return among the Swedish funds, but there may be other factors that have not been taken into account in this study. However, previous research shows that sustainable funds perform better and are more stable during times of crisis. This study has not examined the Swedish funds during times of crisis, but this may be an interesting topic for future research. / Hållbarhet har blivit en stor samhällstrend och intresset för hållbara investeringar har ökat bland investerare. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur hållbarhet påverkar Sverigefonders avkastning och risk. Eftersom forskning kring hållbarhetens påverkan på fonder fokuserar mestadels på investeringar utanför Sverige har denna studie avgränsat sig till Sverigefonder för att fylla luckan i forskningen. Studien analyserar 67 Sverigefonder under 2015-2019 med hjälp av olika modeller såsom CAPM, Fama-French trefaktormodell och Sharpekvot. Vidare mäts fondernas hållbarhet med hjälp av Morningstar hållbarhetsbetyg. Resultat visar inga tecken på linjär regression mellan hållbarhet och resultat från olika modeller samt studiens resultat är inte statistiskt signifikanta. Därmed är studiens slutsats att det inte är hållbarhet som påverkar på risk och avkastning bland Sverigefonderna utan det kan vara andra faktorer som inte tagits hänsyn till i denna studie. Däremot visar tidigare forskning att hållbara fonder presterar bättre och är mer stabila under kristider. Denna studie har inte undersökt Sverigefonderna under kristider men detta kan vara ett intressant ämne för framtida forskning.

Equity Risk Premium (ERP) is the cornerstone in Financial Economics. It is a basic requirement in stock valuation, evaluation of portfolio performance and asset allocation. For the last decades, several studies have attempted to investigate the relationship between macroeconomic drivers of ERP. In this work, I empirically investigate the macroeconomic determinants of UK ERP. For this I parsimoniously cover a large body of literature stemming from ERP puzzle. I motivate the empirical investigation based on three mutually exclusive theoretical lenses. The thesis is organised in the journal paper format. In the first paper I review the literature on ERP over the past twenty-eight years. In particular, the aim of the paper is three fold. First, to review the methods and techniques, proposed by the literature to estimate ERP. Second, to review the literature that attempts to resolve the ERP puzzle, first coined by Mehra and Prescott (1985), by exploring five different types of modifications to the standard utility framework. And third, to review the literature that investigates and develops relationship between ERP and various macroeconomic and market factors in domestic and international context. I find that ERP puzzle is still a puzzle, within the universe of standard power utility framework and Consumption Capital Asset Pricing Model, a conclusion which is in line with Kocherlakota (1996) and Mehra (2003). In the second paper, I investigate the impact of structural monetary policy shocks on ex-post ERP. More specifically, the aim of this paper is to investigate the whether the response of UK ERP is different to the structural monetary policy shocks, before and after the implementation of Quantitative Easing in the UK. I find that monetary policy shocks negatively affect the ERP at aggregate level. However, at the sectoral level, the magnitude of the response is heterogeneous. Further, monetary policy shocks have a significant negative (positive) impact on the ERP before (after) the implementation of Quantitative Easing (QE). The empirical evidence provided in the paper sheds light on the equity market’s asymmetric response to the Bank of England’s monetary policy before and after the monetary stimulus. In the third paper I examine the impact of aggregate and disaggregate consumption shocks on the ex-post ERP of various FTSE indices and the 25 Fama-French style value-weighted portfolios, constructed on the basis of size and book-to-market characteristics. I extract consumption shocks using Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) and investigate its time-series and cross-sectional implications for ERP in the UK. These structural consumption shocks represent deviation of agent’s actual consumption path from its theoretically expected path. Aggregate consumption shocks seem to explain significant time variation in the ERP. At disaggregated level, when the actual consumption is less than expected, the ERP rises. Durable and Semi-durable consumption shocks have a greater impact on the ERP than non-durable consumption shocks. In the fourth and final paper I investigate the impact of short and long term market implied volatility on the UK ERP. I also examine the pricing implications of innovations to short and long term implied market volatility in the cross-section of stocks returns. I find that both the short and the long term implied volatility have significant negative impact on the aggregate ERP, while at sectoral level the impact is heterogeneous. I find both short and long term volatility is priced negatively indicating that (i) investors care both short and long term market implied volatility (ii) investors are ready to pay for insurance against these risks.

This dissertation consists of three studies on the anticipation of mergers and acquisitions (M&amp;As) and its impact on takeover event studies.  Article I investigates whether the market can anticipate both takeovers and their payment forms prior to their announcement dates. This article also proposes a new time-series approach for detecting the ex-ante deal-anticipation and payment-form anticipation dates. The results indicate that the majority of deals and their payment forms are anticipated much earlier than has been documented in previous takeover studies. Moreover, controlling for the anticipation dates matters for explaining the choice of payment method in M&amp;As. Article II studies how assuming that M&amp;As are unpredictable during the estimation window affects the measurement of abnormal returns. The results show that a part of takeover synergy is indeed incorporated into the stock prices during the estimation window of previous studies, around the deal-anticipation dates. This article estimates the parameters of the expected return model from the pre-anticipation period to control the consequences of ex-ante anticipation on the estimates of abnormal returns. Using the anticipation-adjusted approach significantly improves the estimation of the event-window abnormal returns, and provides new insights into some well-documented takeover results. Article III examines how the abnormal returns are affected when a standard event study assumes that the parameters of the expected return model are stable. Using a sample of firm takeovers, the results indicate that the parameters are indeed unstable. This article introduces a time-varying market model to account for the dynamics of merging likelihood when it estimates the abnormal returns. The findings show that the stability assumption causes a standard event study to overestimate significantly the abnormal returns to the target and acquirer shareholders. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Manuscript. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.</p>

The study examines how the investment strategy Magic Formula (Greenblatt, 2006) has performed on the Swedish stock market. It is also investigated how the performance is affected when the strategy is combined with momentum. Since the expected pension for future generations is expected to decline it is important to have private savings with as high return as possible. Therefore, it is relevant to investigate if simple investment strategies can be used to achieve higher return. The purpose with this study is to find out if the investment strategies Magic Formula and Magic Formula combined with momentum has had a higher risk-adjusted return than the benchmark index OMX30. The results show that both Magic Formula and Magic Formula combined with momentum yielded a higher risk-adjusted return than the benchmark index. The results also showed that Magic Formula yielded an even better risk-adjusted return when it was combined with momentum. We wish that the result that was found in this study will give inspiration to private investors in order to achieve a higher return in their savings and a more satisfactory pension in the future

Submitted by Maicon Juliano Schmidt (maicons) on 2015-06-15T13:29:03Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Alexandre Berlanda Costa.pdf: 625532 bytes, checksum: 7a02a02ff657753f6ba5d14030cb8622 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-06-15T13:29:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Alexandre Berlanda Costa.pdf: 625532 bytes, checksum: 7a02a02ff657753f6ba5d14030cb8622 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-02-27 / Nenhuma / A existência da Anomalia de Ações de Baixo Risco (AABR) conflita com duas teorias econômicas tradicionais: a hipótese da eficiência de mercados e o trade-off risco/retorno. Essa anomalia permite que os agentes de mercado explorem uma provável ineficiência do mercado adotando uma estratégia de investir em ações de baixo risco e obter retornos superiores se comparados com ações de risco maior. Estudos anteriores já comprovaram a presença da AABR no mercado brasileiro. Além de investigar a presença, essa pesquisa investiga também a persistência e a magnitude da AABR, utilizando cinco modelos de precificação de ativos com os seguintes fatores de risco: mercado, tamanho, valor, momento e iliquidez. O método escolhido consiste na análise do desempenho de carteiras de ativos (Qn) formadas por quintis dos coeficientes betas de mercado obtidos em cada modelo, sendo o desempenho das carteiras determinado por quatro medidas de performance. As carteiras de ativos são formadas e avaliadas com ações negociadas na BM&FBOVESPA no período de 2001 a 2013; sendo os coeficientes betas dos ativos estimados em relação à carteira teórica IBOVESPA. A comparação das performances das carteiras Q1 e Q5 possibilitou identificar a presença e persistência da AABR na maioria das estratégias de montagem e retenção de carteiras. Os resultados, apesar de persistentes e economicamente relevantes, não são estatisticamente significantes. Na comparação entre os modelos de precificação, o modelo de Dois Fatores foi o que apresentou os melhores resultados em todas as medidas de performance, demonstrando a importância do efeito de liquidez na escolha dos ativos para a determinação da AABR. / The existence of the Low-Beta Stocks Anomaly (LBSA) conflicts with two traditional economic theories: the efficient-market hypothesis and the risk-return tradeoff. This anomaly could allow market participants to exploit a market inefficiency through adopting a strategy of investing in low risk stocks, hence obtaining superior returns compared to those of higher risk stocks. Previous studies have identified the presence of the AABR in the Brazilian market. This research investigates not only the presence of the LBSA in the Brazilian Market but also its persistence and magnitude of the LBSA by using five asset pricing models, including factors such as market risk, size, value, momentum and illiquidity. The method adopted herein consists in analyzing the performance of stocks’ portfolios (Qn) that were built based on the market beta coefficients obtained in each model. This performance was evaluated through four performance measures. Stock’s portfolios were build with stocks traded in the BM&FBOVESPA stock exchange, in the period 2001-2013. Stocks’ beta coefficients were estimated considering the IBOVESPA index’s theoretical portfolio as a proxy for the market portfolio. Through the comparison of Q1 and Q5 portfolios’ performance, it was possible to identify the presence and persistence of the LSBA in most of the portfolio building and holding strategies adopted. The results, however persistent and economically significant, were not statistically significant. Comparing the different asset pricing models, the Two-Factor model achieved the best results in all performance measures, demonstrating the importance of the liquidity effect on the choice of the assets to exploit the LBSA.