El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar el uso y aplicación del modelo de valoración de activos de capital, CAPM, como herramienta de planificación y evaluación financiera, comparándolo con otros modelos alternativos. El CAPM propone una relación entre el riesgo y rendimiento de un activo. El riesgo está representado por el coeficiente beta, que mide la sensibilidad del instrumento financiero en relación con el riesgo sistemático, ya sea en un portafolio de activos o en la valoración de una empresa. Debido a que existen críticas sobre la validez del CAPM, en este estudio se busca conocer la efectividad que tiene el uso y la aplicación del modelo. Para ello, se han buscado evidencias empíricas, en diferentes países, y sectores económicos en las que se compara el CAPM con otros modelos alternativos, tales como el APT o el de Tres Factores Fama y French que, según la investigación realizada, serían los más utilizados. Los resultados de esta investigación muestran que el CAPM no ofrece necesariamente resultados positivos significativos en los estudios revisados. Sin embargo, ello no quiere decir que el CAPM no sea un modelo suficiente para predecir la relación riesgo – rentabilidad en los casos en los que se aplica. Se concluye por ello que, a pesar de que existen modelos alternativos tratando de superar las limitaciones del CAPM, hoy en día este modelo sigue siendo el más utilizado fundamentalmente por su sencillez y por su capacidad de explicar y predecir, de manera suficiente, en la mayoría de las aplicaciones generales. / The objective of this paper is to analyze the use and application of the capital asset pricing model, CAPM, as a planning and financial evaluation tool and to compare it with other alternative models. The CAPM propose a relationship between the risk and return of an asset. The risk is represented by coefficient called beta, which measures the sensitivity of the financial asset in relation to it´s systematic risk, either in a portfolio or in the valuation of a company. Given that there are controversies about the validity of the CAPM, the study is gad is to understand the effectiveness of the use and application of the model. In order to do that, evidence, in different countries and economic sectors, is presented in which the CAPM is compared with other alternative models, such as the APT or the Fama and French Three Factor, according to this investigation would be the most used. The results of this investigation shown that, the CAPM, even though it is not able to offer significant positives results in the studies reviewed. However, it is not a sufficient model for predictins the risk - return relationship in the cases where it applies. It is concluded for that, although there are alternatives models trying to overcome the limitations of the CAPM, this model is nowadays the most used yet, fundamentally because of its simplicity and its ability to explain and predict, in a sufficient fashion, in most of the general applications. / Trabajo de Suficiencia Profesional

Abstract not available

Research in this thesis deals with some unexplored, or only partially explored, issues relating to the information content of volatility of the idiosyncratic component of asset returns at the firm and industry-level, both in the context of developed and emerging stock markets. Specific issues we have investigated include potential role of idiosyncratic volatility of equity returns for the explanation of future stock market volatility, aggregate economic activity, cross-border information transmission, and fundamental efficiency of stock prices. Chapter 2 of the thesis presents research into the information content of firm and industry-level idiosyncratic volatility, estimated as cross-sectional volatility (CSV), for future market-level volatility in Australia. We find that CSV does contain information beyond what is already contained in the lagged market-level return shocks and has a significant positive relationship with conditional market volatility. Our analysis gives new empirical evidence that the effect of CSV is stronger in relatively stable market conditions than in more volatile market conditions. We also examine how the information content of stock turnover and aggregate company announcements compares with that of CSV, and take a novel data-driven approach to verify whether CSV captures any information about multiple common factor shocks in asset returns. The explanatory power of CSV for future market volatility remains robust even after controlling for the effects of stock turnover, company announcements and omitted factor shocks in returns. These results are in line with the theoretical models relating volatility to the flow of information to the market, and suggest that the amount of information as captured by the firm and industry-level CSV shares a common co-movement with the market-wide information flow. In Chapter 3, unlike most other studies investigating the role of macroeconomic aggregates in explaining the fluctuations in stock market returns, we consider the possibility of reverse causality, and that using idiosyncratic volatility of industry-level stock returns in the context of Australia. Both the theories of investment and consumption under uncertainty and the models of sectoral reallocation provide rationale for the analysis. By explicitly modeling the cyclical patterns of industry-level volatility and relating it to corresponding cyclical behaviour of macroeconomic variables, we show that industry-level volatility is a leading indicator of the cyclical movements in output growth and inflation in Australia. We find complementary evidence from the multi-step Granger causality test and the impulse response analysis based on a vector autoregression of industry-level volatility, GDP growth, inflation and changes in unemployment rate. However, the forecast error variance decompositions suggest that although the industry-level volatility accounts for a significant fraction of the forecast error of inflation, this explains only a small fraction of output and unemployment uncertainties. Further analysis indicates that industry-level volatility contains better information about the future state of the economy than does aggregate stock market volatility. In Chapter 4, we explore a new but potentially important channel of crossborder information transmission between international stock markets ���� idiosyncratic volatility of stock returns. Specifically, we analyze the role of US and Japanese idiosyncratic volatility in transmitting information across three smaller but advanced Asia-Pacific stock markets – Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore. We find that, similar to cross-market first and second moment return correlations, market-wide measures of IV are also highly correlated across countries. The effect of US and Japanese IV information is found to be much stronger on cross-market conditional volatility process than on the returns process. Further, we find significant contemporaneous and dynamic information transmission from IV of the US and Japan to the trading volume of other stock markets. Transmission of IV information, in general, seems to have gained momentum in the period since the Asian crisis of 1997. Overall evidence presented in this chapter is consistent with the interpretation that IV may contain information about some unobservable factors driving international stock market co-movement. In Chapter 5, we make the first attempt to understand the direct relationship between firm-specific variations in returns and firm fundamentals by analyzing firmlevel micro panel data in the context of each of a set of emerging Asian stock markets. After properly accounting for unobserved firm-specific effects, volatility persistence and potential endogeneity bias, we find that firm-specific variation of stock returns is highly correlated with, and is significantly explained by, alternative proxies of firm-specific variation of fundamentals in a majority of the emerging markets in Asia. Further analysis reveals that the observed effect of firm-specific fundamentals variation on returns variation is not indirectly driven by some other factors known to affect stock return volatility, viz., firm size, stock turnover, and leverage. Consistent with the rational approach, these results suggest that stock prices in majority of the Asian emerging markets are not devoid of fundamentals. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The explanatory power of six asset-pricing models are tested and compared in this study. The models include the four known asset pricing models: the CAPM, the Fama and French's (1996) Three-Factor model, the Carhart's (1997)'s Four-Factor model, a model similar to Zepeda's (1999) Five-Factor model. Additionally, it includes two new models - the Five-Factor-Volume (5F-V) model and the Six-Factor model, which are developed in line with Ross's (1976) Arbitrage Pricing Theory.

<p>This paper evaluates if international stock markets are exposed to fluctuation in the</p><p>exchange rate and whether this exposure is related to exports, imports and inflation. Eight</p><p>countries are studied: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Hong Kong, Sweden, Switzerland, the</p><p>United Kingdom and the United States. The empirical investigation covers the period</p><p>from 1995 to 2004 and the estimation is conducted using the framework of Patro, D.K.,</p><p>Wald, J.K. and Wu, Y. (2002). The empirical findings show that all international stock</p><p>markets are exposed to exchange rate risk, except for Brazil. The amount of exchange rate</p><p>exposure is found to be sensitive to a country’s export, import and inflation. The results</p><p>imply that there are predictable relationship between changes in the return of the national</p><p>stock index return and fluctuation in the exchange rate. In addition, imports and exports</p><p>as well as inflation may be useful in predicting exchange rate risks.</p>

This paper evaluates if international stock markets are exposed to fluctuation in the exchange rate and whether this exposure is related to exports, imports and inflation. Eight countries are studied: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Hong Kong, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. The empirical investigation covers the period from 1995 to 2004 and the estimation is conducted using the framework of Patro, D.K., Wald, J.K. and Wu, Y. (2002). The empirical findings show that all international stock markets are exposed to exchange rate risk, except for Brazil. The amount of exchange rate exposure is found to be sensitive to a country’s export, import and inflation. The results imply that there are predictable relationship between changes in the return of the national stock index return and fluctuation in the exchange rate. In addition, imports and exports as well as inflation may be useful in predicting exchange rate risks.

This thesis has the intention to investigate the risk situation for small investors in the domestic residential property market in Sweden, and discuss some alternatives for reducing that risk. Focus will be on risk reduction by diversification. Residential property is considered to be a rather safe investment for the long term investor. The return is determined by the change of value for the property (capital growth), and the direct return through net rental income. When investments in residential property are compared with other types of investments, they have high returns compared to their stan-dard deviation. Diversification gains are described in the frame of the Capital Assets Pricing Model (CAPM). The CAPM shows that portfolios based on residential property can reduce their risk and maintain the same level of returns through diversification. To get the best effect out of this diversification this should be done with assets that are least correlated with residential property. This thesis has tested with other residential property, other real estate and equities/bonds. Of which equities/bonds gave the best results. An optimal portfolio based on historical data from 1984 – 2003 suggests a portfolio with 40 -60 % residential property, 30 – 60 % bonds and 0 – 10 % equities. This is with a risk free rate between 3 – 11 %. The debt ratio for this portfolio is determined by the investor’s risk-aversity and utility function. The positive effects from diversification have to be compared to the increased scale effect from investing in more residential property when chosing new investment items. Investors can get a good diversification performance even with a few stakes. The main point in this thesis is that investors with residential property can get positive effects from diversification and the effects from diversification increase the more different the investments are.

Since 1994 when the Warsaw Stock Exchange has been acknowledged as a full member of World Federation of Exchanges and became one of the fastest developing security markets in the region, it has been hard to find any studies relating to the assets price performance on this exchange. That is why I decided to write this paper in which the Nobel price winning theory namely the Capital Asset Pricing Model has been tested. The Capital Asset Pricing Model (or CAPM) is an equilibrium model which relates asset’s risk measured by beta to its returns. It states that in a competitive market the expected rate of return on an asset varies in direct proportion to its beta. In this paper the performance of 100 stocks traded continuously on the main market in the years 2002-2006 has been tested. I have performed three independent tests of the CAPM based on different methods and techniques to better check the validity of the theory and then compared the results. As in the case of many other studies of the Capital Asset Pricing Model, this one didn’t find a complete support for the model but couldn’t reject some of its features either.

År 2005 införde Europeiska unionen en förordning som innebär att alla svenska börsnoterade företag måste nedskrivningspröva sin goodwill istället för att som tidigare göra årliga avskrivningar. Detta utförs med hjälp av en diskonteringsränta och påverkar utfallet om nedskrivning ska göras eller inte. Vår uppsats baseras på en studie av Carlin och Finch (2009) som jämförde australiensiska företags redovisade diskonteringsräntor med teoretiska sådana beräknade med hjälp av CAPM. De fann att en stor del av företagen använde en opportunistisk diskonteringsränta som gjorde att de undvek att skriva ned sin goodwill. Carlin och Finch val av modell fick dock kritik och därför använder vi både CAPM och trefaktormodellen när vi gör motsvarande undersökning på noterade svenska företag. Våra resultat visar inga tydliga tecken på att företagen i vår undersökning använder sig av en opportunistisk diskonteringsränta och det är endast marginella skillnader mellan våra båda modeller. Det går inte heller att se några tydliga tecken på att företag vars goodwillpost är viktig, det vill säga hög goodwillandel eller en hög goodwillintensitet, i större grad använder en opportunistisk diskonteringsränta vid nedskrivningsprövning av goodwill.

This study uses cluster analysis as the methodology to explore policy of the asset allocation as well as the selection of equities under the multiple-factor asset pricing models. Based on the data of financial market recorded on Bloomberg from 2000/1/4 to 2012/2/10, the conclusions of this study are summarized as following: First at all, under the significance level of 5%, P/S ratio should be included in the multiple-factor asset pricing model. Nonetheless, the significance of proxy agent of foreign exchange volatility in terms of 11-day moving average of USD/JPY foreign exchange spot rate, as well as the interest spread in terms of yields on 10-year US government bond subtracting 3-month US treasury bill cannot pass the required significance level. Second, the rates of stock return as Qualcomm, Intel and Texas instruments in the industry supply chain of technology products, will be positively related to interest spread, with the variable of ¡§Foreign_Volitility¡¨ negatively related to those rates of return as well as sales growth momentum positively related to those. As far as those rates of stock return 3C brand companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Dell and IBM, the interpreting capability of variable of ¡§Foreign_Volitility¡¨ under the assumptions of market structure in this study, will be mixed, with the interest spread positively related to those returns and P/S ratio generating mixed outcomes. As far as those equities such as GE, Procter & Gamble, Home Depot, Tiffany, AIG, NIKE, Exxon Mobile Corp, the interpreting capability of variable of ¡§Foreign_Volitility¡¨ under the assumptions of market structure in this study, will be negatively related to stock return except for Exxon Mobile Corp, with the interest spread generating mixed outcomes and P/S ratio positively related to those returns.