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Journal of Financial Economics Vol. 117 No. 3 2015

Incremental variables and the investment opportunity set

Eugene F. Fama1; Kenneth R. French2

1 University of Chicago · 2 Dartmouth College

Abstract

Variables with strong marginal explanatory power in cross-section asset pricing regressions typically show less power to produce increments to average portfolio returns, for two reasons. (1) Adding an explanatory variable can attenuate the slopes in a regression. (2) Adding a variable with marginal explanatory power always attenuates the values of other explanatory variables in the extremes of a regression’s fitted values. Without a restriction on portfolio weights, the maximum Sharpe ratios in the GRS statistic of Gibbons, Ross, and Shanken (1989) provide little information about an incremental variable’s impact on the portfolio opportunity set.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfineco.2015.05.001
Volume
117
Issue
3
Pages
470-488
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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