This dissertation examines three research questions in empirical asset pricing. First, I analyze the relation between liquidity and mispricing. I find a strong liquidity premium in long/short portfolio returns based on the Stambaugh, Yu, and Yuan (2015) mispricing score. This premium can be mostly attributed to arbitrage asymmetry among very illiquid stocks. I also investigate the
relation between liquidity shocks and mispricing. In the full sample, I document that negative liquidity shocks increase the magnitude of mispricing. Controlling for the state of the economy by means of the cross-sectional empirical distribution of liquidity shocks measured on firm level, I find a second effect: positive liquidity shocks can also increase the magnitude of mispricing.
These results show that liquidity is an important determinant of mispricing in international equity markets. Second, I compare prominent factor models from behavioral finance (Daniel, Hirshleifer, and Sun, 2020; Stambaugh and Yuan, 2017) and neoclassical finance (Sharpe, 1964 and Lintner, 1965; Fama and French, 1993, 2015, 2018; Hou et al., 2020; Hou, Xue, and L. Zhang, 2015) in the four regions North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Japan, based on the maximum squared Sharpe ratio. Using the comparison tests of Barillas et al. (2019), I find that the Hou et al. (2020) model dominates all other models besides the Daniel, Hirshleifer, and Sun (2020) model in North America. In Europe and likewise in Asia-Pacific, the Stambaugh and Yuan (2017) model, the Daniel, Hirshleifer, and Sun (2020) model, and the Fama and French (2018) model share the first
rank. In Japan, the Stambaugh and Yuan (2017) model has the highest maximum squared Sharpe ratio, but only the deviation from the capital asset pricing model is significant. Third, I investigate which profitability factor should be used in international markets ex US. I compare factors based on the following profitability measures: return on equity, gross profitability according to Novy-Marx (2013), operating profitability according to Fama and French (2015), operating profitability according to Ball et al. (2015), cash-based operating profitability according to Ball et al. (2016), and cash-based gross profitability, which I define as gross profit adjusted for accounting accruals scaled by the book value of total assets. I find that a factor based on cash-based gross profitability outperforms the other factors in a series of asset pricing tests. Thus, this factor can be seen as the profitability factor of choice in international markets ex US.
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This dissertation examines three research questions in empirical asset pricing. First, I analyze the relation between liquidity and mispricing. I find a strong liquidity premium in long/short portfolio returns based on the Stambaugh, Yu, and Yuan (2015) mispricing score. This premium can be mostly attributed to arbitrage asymmetry among very illiquid stocks. I also investigate the
relation between liquidity shocks and mispricing. In the full sample, I document that negative liquidity shocks inc...
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