Bakgrund I snart ett halvt sekel har aktier med lågt beta visat sig generera hög avkastning i förhållande till risk. Denna observation brukar benämnas lågriskanomalin och ända sedan fenomenet uppmärksammades av Black 1972 har olika studier försökt förklara orsaken till dess förekomst. Empiriska resultat har inte bara visat på att lågriskaktier presterat bättre än vad teorin förutspår, utan till och med visat på ett negativt samband mellan risk och avkastning. Detta är i rak motsats till traditionella avkastningsmodeller som exempelvis CAPM, vilken hävdar att avkastning är en direkt funktion av systematisk risk – beta. Syfte Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka förekomsten av lågriskanomalin på den svenska aktiemarknaden och analysera huruvida anomalin kan förklaras av den tredje ordningens centralmoment, skevhet. Vidare syftar uppsatsen till att testa och analysera möjligheten att hantera skevhetsrisk genom att inkludera denna som en variabel i en tredimensionell optimeringsmodell. Genomförande Studien bygger på insamlad kurshistorik mellan åren 1998–2018 för samtliga aktier som har ingått i indexet OMXSPI. Totalt har 9650 risksorterade portföljer skapats, där loggning genomförts av portföljegenskaper och analysmått. Sambandet mellan lågriskanomalin och skevhetsrisk har testats genom hypotestester baserat på inkluderandet av en tredimensionell optimeringsmodell samt Three-moment CAPM.   Slutsats Resultaten visar att aktier med lägre beta i genomsnitt har presterat signifikant bättre än högbetaaktier sett till både riskjuterad- samt faktiskt avkastning. Förhållandet mellan risk och avkastning har således varit negativt för den undersökta perioden. Vidare påvisas en signifikant riskaversion mot skevhetsrisk, men trots detta tyder samtliga av studiens tester på att skevhet är otillräckligt för att förklara detta fenomen. Genom tredimensionell optimering visas även hur portföljspecifik skevhet kan hanteras utan att ge signifikant försämrad avkastning. Dessa resultat faller i linje med att lågriskanomalin uppstår som en konsekvens av ett ineffektivt utbud- och efterfrågesamband och kan därmed ses som ett argument mot den effektiva marknadshypotesen / Background For nearly half a century, stocks with low beta has shown to generate high return relative to risk. This observation is called the low risk anomaly and ever since it was observed by Black in 1972, different studies have tried to find an explanation for its presence. Empirical results have not only found that low risk stocks outperform in terms of riskadjusted returns, but also that the relationship between risk and return seem to have a negative correlation. This is the exact opposite of what is suggested by traditional financial models, such as CAPM, which claim that return on assets is a direct function of the its systematic risk – beta. Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the presence of the low risk anomaly on the Stockholm stock exchange and analyse if it can be explained by the third central moment, skewness. Further we intend to test and analyse if it is possible to control skewness risk by including it as a variable in three-dimensional optimization. Methodology The thesis is conducted by acquiring historical stock prices for the years 1998–2018 for all shares included in the index OMXSPI. To answer the underlying research questions, 9650 risk-sorted portfolios are created where portfolio performance indicators are being logged. Furthermore, the relationship between the low risk anomaly and skewness-based risk is examined through hypothesis testing, which depend on a three-dimensional optimization model as well as the Three-moment CAPM. Results The results of this study show that stocks with low beta has significantly outperformed high-beta stocks in terms of both risk-adjusted as well as actual return. This implies that the relationship between risk and return has been negative during the time period investigated. Furthermore, the results show a significant aversion towards skewness risk. However, all of the tests indicate that skewness is insufficient in the explanation of the low risk anomaly. It has been shown by three-dimensional optimization that it is possible to control portfolio skewness, without a significant loss in return. These results are in line with the conclusion that the low risk anomaly is an effect of inefficiency in supply and demand and can therefore be seen as an argument against the efficient market hypothesis.

Chapter 1: Intuition suggests that constraint investment strategies will result in losses due to a limited portfolio allocation. Yet prior research has shown that this is not the case for a particular set of constraint mutual funds so-called Socially Responsible Investing, SRI. In this paper I show that such assets do face loses to portfolio efficiency due to their limited asset universe. I contribute to the literature by employing two techniques to estimate asset performance. First, I estimate a DEA based efficiency score that allows for direct comparison between ex-post efficiency rankings and test the ex-ante relevance of such scores by including them into asset pricing models. Second, I further check if these results are consistent when comparing the performance of ethical funds based on the alphas of traditional asset pricing models even after adjusting for coskewness risk. Overall, the results suggest that ethical funds underperform traditional unconstraint investment assets. Chapter 2: Starting after the turn of the millennium, inflation has been persistently higher than the short term T-Bill rate. Following the traditional view, this will imply a negative real rates of return that have become commonplace in the US economy. This paper examines the possibility that if an inflation risk discount contained in nominal rates exist and can explain low or negative real rates, using consumption based asset pricing model. Evidence suggests using the traditional Fisher equation to calculate real rates leads to an overestimate of real rates due to a modest inflation risk premium. To achieve non-negative real rates in a consumption based asset pricing framework the covariance between consumption growth and inflation innovations would have to be at least thirty times larger than empirically found, and in opposite direction, for the Post-Volker era. Still, though the after 2000’s covariance is positive, which suggest a discount on risk free, the magnitude is still too small to explain negativity of real rates. JEL Classification : E21, E31 Key Words : Mutual Funds, Performance, Data Envelop Analysis, Coskewness, Risk Factors, Real Returns, Consumption Bases Asset Pricing Models, Inflation

Submitted by Regio Martins (regio@fgvmail.br) on 2011-03-16T22:17:36Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis.pdf: 1258015 bytes, checksum: 511b0226f85ea587ab4fb0f330be47c6 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Andrea Virginio Machado(andrea.machado@fgv.br) on 2011-03-18T12:45:47Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis.pdf: 1258015 bytes, checksum: 511b0226f85ea587ab4fb0f330be47c6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2011-03-31T18:04:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Thesis.pdf: 1258015 bytes, checksum: 511b0226f85ea587ab4fb0f330be47c6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-08-30 / In this thesis, we investigate some aspects of the interplay between economic regulation and the risk of the regulated firm. In the first chapter, the main goal is to understand the implications a mainstream regulatory model (Laffont and Tirole, 1993) have on the systematic risk of the firm. We generalize the model in order to incorporate aggregate risk, and find that the optimal regulatory contract must be severely constrained in order to reproduce real-world systematic risk levels. We also consider the optimal profit-sharing mechanism, with an endogenous sharing rate, to explore the relationship between contract power and beta. We find results compatible with the available evidence that high-powered regimes impose more risk to the firm. In the second chapter, a joint work with Daniel Lima from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), we start from the observation that regulated firms are subject to some regulatory practices that potentially affect the symmetry of the distribution of their future profits. If these practices are anticipated by investors in the stock market, the pattern of asymmetry in the empirical distribution of stock returns may differ among regulated and non-regulated companies. We review some recently proposed asymmetry measures that are robust to the empirical regularities of return data and use them to investigate whether there are meaningful differences in the distribution of asymmetry between these two groups of companies. In the third and last chapter, three different approaches to the capital asset pricing model of Kraus and Litzenberger (1976) are tested with recent Brazilian data and estimated using the generalized method of moments (GMM) as a unifying procedure. We find that ex-post stock returns generally exhibit statistically significant coskewness with the market portfolio, and hence are sensitive to squared market returns. However, while the theoretical ground for the preference for skewness is well established and fairly intuitive, we did not find supporting evidence that investors require a premium for supporting this risk factor in Brazil. / Essa tese investiga alguns aspectos da relação entre regulação econômica e risco da empresa regulada. No primeiro capítulo, o objetivo é entender as implicações do modelo tradicional de regulação por incentivos (Laffont e Tirole, 1993) sobre o risco sistemático da firma. Generalizamos o modelo de forma a incorporar risco agregado ao lucro da atividade, e descobrimos que o contrato ótimo deve ser severamente restringido para que reproduza betas (CAPM) próximos aos observados em setores regulados. Usamos um caso particular do modelo, de regulação por repartição de lucro (profit-sharing regulation), para avaliar a relação entre a potência do contrato e o nível de risco não diversificável. Encontramos resultados compatíveis com a evidência disponível, de que regimes com alta potência impõem mais risco sobre a firma. No segundo capítulo, escrito em co-autoria com Daniel Lima da Universidade da Califórnia em San Diego (UCSD), partimos da constatação de que empresas reguladas podem estar sujeitas a práticas regulatórias que potencialmente afetam a simetria da distribuição de seus lucros futuros. Se essas práticas forem antecipadas pelos investidores no mercado secundário de ações, poderemos identificar diferenças no padrão da assimetria da distribuição empírica de retornos das empresas reguladas com relação às não-reguladas. Nesse capítulo revisamos alguns métodos de mensuração de assimetria propostos recentemente na literatura, que são robustos à características comuns em séries de retornos financeiros (caudas pesadas e correlação serial), e investigamos se existem diferenças significativas na distribuição de assimetria entre empresas reguladas e não-reguladas. No terceiro e último capítulo, três diferentes abordagens empíricas do modelo de apreçamento de ativos de Kraus e Litzenberger (1976) são testadas com dados do mercado brasileiro de ações. Descobrimos que a distribuição empírica de retornos costuma exibir co-assimetria significativa com relação à carteira de mercado, e que portanto os retornos das ações são sensíveis à volatilidade (retornos quadráticos) do mercado. No entanto, apesar da base teórica para a preferência por retornos assimétricos esteja bem estabelecida e seja bastante intuitiva, não encontramos evidência que suporte a hipótese de que os investidores requeiram um prêmio para aceitar esse tipo de risco no mercado local.