This thesis addresses asset pricing in Chinese A-share stock markets using a dataset consisting of all shares listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from January 1997 to December 2007. The empirical work is carried out based on two theoretical foundations: the efficient market hypothesis and behavioural finance. It examines and compares the validity of two traditional asset pricing models and two behavioural asset pricing models. The investigation is initially performed within a traditional asset pricing framework. The three-factor Fama-French model is estimated and then augmented by additional macroeconomic and bond market variables. The results suggest that these traditional asset pricing models fail to explain fully the time-variation of stock returns in Chinese stock markets, leaving non-normally distributed and heteroskedastic residuals, calling for further explanatory variables and suggesting the existence of a structure break. Indeed, the macroeconomic and bond market factors provide little help to the asset pricing model. Using the Fama-French model as the benchmark, further research is done by investigating investor sentiment as the third dimension beside returns and risks. Investor sentiment helps explain the mis-pricing component of returns in the Fama-French model and the time-variation in the factors themselves. Incorporating investor sentiment into the asset pricing model improves the model performance, lessening the importance of the Fama-French factors, and suggesting that in China, sentiment affects both the way in which investors judge risks as well as portfolio returns directly. The sentiment effect on asset pricing is also examined under a nonlinear Markov-switching framework. The stochastic regime-dependent model reveals that stock returns in China are driven by fundamental factors in bear and low volatility markets but are prone to sentiment and become uncoupled from fundamental risks in bull and high volatility markets.

This thesis examines the performance of different models of conditional betas and higher comoments in the context of the cross-section of expected stock returns, both in-sample and out-of-sample. I first examine the performance of different conditional market beta models by using monthly returns of the Fama-French 25 portfolios formed by the quintiles of size and book-to-market ratio in Chapter 3. This is a cross-sectional test of the conditional CAPM. The models examined include simple OLS regressions, the macroeconomic variables model, the state-space model, the multivariate GARCH model and the realized beta model. The results show that the state-space model performs best in-sample with significant betas and insignificant intercepts. For the out-of-sample performance, however, none of the models examined can explain returns of the 25 portfolios. Next, I examine the recently proposed realized beta model, which is based on the realized volatility literature, by using individual stocks listed in the US market in Chapter 4. I extend the realized market beta model to betas of multi-factor asset pricing models. Models tested are the CAPM, the Fama-French three-factor model and a four-factor model including the three Fama-French factors and a momentum factor. Realized betas of different models are used in the cross-section regressions along with firm-level variables such as size, book-to-market ratio and past returns. The in-sample results show that market beta is significant and additional betas of multi-factor models can reduce although not eliminate the effects of firm-level variables. The out-of-sample results show that no betas are significant. The results are robust across different markets such as NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ. In Chapter 5, I test if realized coskewness and cokurtosis can help explain the cross-section of stock returns. I add coskewness and cokurtosis to the factor pricing models tested in Chapter 4. The results show that the coefficients of coskewness and cokurtosis have the correct sign as predicted by the higher-moment CAPM theory but only cokurtosis is significant. Cokurtosis is significant not only in-sample but also out-of-sample, suggesting cokurtosis is an important risk. However, the effects of firm-level variables remain significant after higher moments are included, indicating a rejection of higher-moment asset pricing models. The results are also robust across different markets such as NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ. The overall results of this thesis indicate a rejection of the conditional asset pricing models. Models of systematic risks, i.e. betas and higher comoments, cannot explain the cross-section of expected stock returns.

This thesis deals with the performance evaluation of a selected group of insurance companies. The text is divided into several parts and begins with the explanation of theoretical frameworks for both insurance and the ranking process. This knowledge is then applied to the object of analysis. Mainly the financial performance of insurers was assessed, by means of the so-called spread indicator. Hence, part of the analysis is also a cost of equity calculation with the help of the Capital Asset Pricing Model. The outcome of this work is the ranking of analyzed insurance companies by their financial performance in 2007-2009. The contribution of the work can be seen not only in forming the ranking, but in demonstration of a practical application of the chosen methodology as well as in description of its advantages and disadvantages.

This thesis analyzes the use of realized moments in asset pricing. The analysis is done using dataset containing log-returns for 29 of the most traded stocks and covering 10 years of data. The dataset is split into training set covering 7 years and test set covering 3 years of data. For each of the stocks a separate time series model is estimated. In evaluation of the quality of the models, metrics such as RMSE, MAD, accuracy in forecasting the sign of future returns, and returns achievable by executing trades based on the recommendations from the model are used. Even though the inclusion of realized moments does not provide significant improvements in terms of RMSE, it is found that realized skewness and kurtosis significantly contribute to explaining the returns of individual stocks as they lead to consistent improvements in identifying future positive, as well as negative, returns. Moreover, the recommendations from the models using realized moments can help us achieve significantly higher returns from trading stocks. Inclusion of the interaction terms for variance and returns, skewness and returns, and kurtosis and variance, provides additional improvement of forecasting accuracy, as well as improvements in returns achievable by executing transactions based on recommendations from the model....

Den svenska riksdagen röstade 2018-06-07 ja till regeringens förslag om en ny spellag. Den nya spellagen innebär bland annat införandet av ett licenssystem för spelbolag verksamma på den svenska spelmarknaden. Denna studie undersöker huruvida nyheter om beviljade licenser leder till positiv avkastning hos spelbolagens aktier. För att undersöka effekten av nyheterna utförs en eventstudie med licensierade spelbolag på den svenska och norska aktiemarknaden. Eventstudien undersöker eventfönster som består av en, fem, tio och tjugo dagar där signifikansen testas genom ett t-test. Resultaten visar att den kumulativa genomsnittliga abnormala avkastningen är signifikant för eventfönster med längd av en dag, men icke-signifikant för eventfönster med längd av fem, tio och tjugo dagar.

Thesis advisor: Ronnie Sadka / In the first essay of this dissertation, I study the impact that hedge fund manager connections have on investment ideas. I find that hedge fund managers who previously worked at the same prior hedge fund invest more similarly, hold more overlapping portfolios, and trade and overweight the same stocks relative to managers who do not share an employment connection. Overall, these results support theoretical prediction that networked managers share ideas that leads to price discovery for commonly held stocks. The second essay analyzes the role of ETFs in mutual fund families and is joint work with Caitlin Dannhauser. We study mutual fund and ETF twins - index funds from the same family that follow the same benchmark. We find that mutual fund twins have lower overall tax burdens while ETF twins have higher long-term yields and unrealized capital gains, but are compensated with lower expense ratios. Fund families benefit because twin offerings generate higher flows than their non-twin peers. These results support previous research that mutual fund families use diversification and subsidization to benefit the overall family. In the third essay, I study the use of latent factors in explaining hedge fund returns. Using an alternative latent factor estimator, asymptotic principal components (APC), I find explains more of the common variation of hedge fund returns on average and does so with greater efficiency than that found in the literature. I also identify an increase in the common variation across hedge fund excess return in the time-series via the extracted latent factors. My results suggest an impetus for future researchers to employ APC factors when characterizing hedge fund performance. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

Van Rensburg and Robertson (2003a) stated that the CAPM beta has little or no relationship with returns generated by size and price to earnings sorted portfolios. This study intends to demonstrate that a reformulated CAPM beta, estimated using return on equity as opposed to share returns, unravels the size and value premium. The study proves that the “cash-flow” generated beta partially explains the cross-sectional variation in share returns when measured over the long run, specifically when portfolios are sorted on book to market, however the cash flow beta is less successful when attempting to explain the small size premium. The premise of the study is that the cash flow dynamics of share returns eventually dominate the first and second moments and thus result in cash flow based measures of risk and return that should succeed in explaining the cross-sectional variation in share returns. The study makes use of vector autoregressive models in order to examine the short term effect of structural shocks to the cash flow fundamentals of a stock or portfolio through impulse response functions as well as quantifying a long-term relationship between cash flow fundamentals and share returns using a VECM specification. The study further uses fixed effects, random effects and GMM/dynamic panel data cross-sectional regressions in order to examine the ability of the cash flow beta explaining the value and size premium. The results of the study are mixed. The cash flow beta does well in explaining the returns of portfolios sorted on book to market, but fails to do the same with size sorted portfolios. In the cash flow betas favour, it performs far better than the conventionally measured CAPM beta throughout the study.

Thesis (M.M. (Finance & Investment))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Business Administration, 2015. / Researchers have suggested that emerging markets’ activity is driven largely by unlisted companies. These companies are dynamic, and show a relatively equitable income distribution. However, they operate under severe challenges which can be a deterrent to their success. In spite of these difficulties, the companies form exceptional investment targets due to their innovative abilities, ability to customize products and formulate business models that reduce bottlenecks and input costs as well as take advantage of economies of scale and scope. Important risk factors such as: political, currency, corporate governance and information risks, amongst others, should be factored in during the valuation process of emerging market companies. In this paper, several criteria are used to assess thirteen popular emerging market valuation models’ ability to effectively incorporate these risks. Based on the outcomes of the assessment a best fit model is selected. However, none of the emerging market valuation models explicitly factor in irrationality of market participants. In order to address this, the study focuses on seven behavioural approaches to valuation under the assumption of investor rationality and managerial overconfidence and/or optimism, with a purpose to select one to include in the above mentioned “best fit” emerging market valuation models. Next, assessment mechanisms for adapting these two models for private company valuation were flagged by discussing approaches currently used in academia and corporate finance. Finally, possible means of combining the three objectives, and assessing the success of doing so, as an area for further research, were recommended. Key Words: emerging markets, valuation, risk premium, country risk, systematic risk, unsystematic risk, private companies, managerial overconfidence, managerial optimism, irrationality, efficient markets, capital asset pricing model

Value and momentum strategies have been heavenly researched in financial academic literature. In this essay, different portfolios based on value and momentum strategies have been constructed to examine if it is possible to exploit market anomalies to outperform market returns. Both value and momentum is seen as two market anomalies according to earlier literature. The test were made on the Swedish market, and all data were collected from the Nasdaq OMX Stockholm Large Cap list. The findings includes a significant outperformance of market returns in nearly all portfolio tested, as well as lower standard deviations for some. However, an empirical asset pricing model, based on four factors from the Swedish market were constructed to seek explanation for the results. Overall the factor variables were rejected on their statistical significances, except for the market factor which were statistical significant for all portfolios except one.

As more and more investors look to diversify their portfolios further, their attentions have moved past emerging markets in recent years, towards the so-called frontier markets. Frontier markets are less developed and liquid than emerging markets but offer tremendous opportunities for investors willing to allocate capital into them. This thesis will look into the applicability of global, as well as Frontier Fama-French-Carhart four-factor models within these markets and what the consequences are in terms of the efficient market hypothesis. The factor models will try to explain returns based on Size, Value and Momentum, as the literature has shown that asset pricing models tend to have difficulties explaining these strategies. Our findings indicate that Global Fama-French factors do partially explain long-only returns, yet Frontier Fama-French-Carhart factors appear more suitable. However, the results indicate that there is a factor missing in Frontier Fama-French-Carhart factors, which could explain the excess returns. Moreover, as we did not find statistically significant and positive intercepts for all applied Momentum strategies against the Frontier and Global Fama-French-Carhart factors (not even in the robustness test), we cannot reject the weak efficient market hypothesis. However, dollar-neutral Size and Value strategies (also the combined portfolio with dollar-neutral Momentum) seem to consistently outperform Frontier and Global factors.