Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis Vol. 55 No. 6 2020

Model Comparison with Sharpe Ratios

Francisco Barillas^1,2; Raymond Kan³; Cesare Robotti^4,5; Jay Shanken^6,7,8

¹ UNSW Sydney · ² Barilla (Italy) · ³ University of Toronto · ⁴ Schott (Germany) · ⁵ University of Warwick · ⁶ National Bureau of Economic Research · ⁷ Emory University · ⁸ Hudklinikken

Abstract

We show how to conduct asymptotically valid tests of model comparison when the extent of model mispricing is gauged by the squared Sharpe ratio improvement measure. This is equivalent to ranking models on their maximum Sharpe ratios, effectively extending the Gibbons, Ross, and Shanken (1989) test to accommodate the comparison of nonnested models. Mimicking portfolios can be substituted for any nontraded model factors, and estimation error in the portfolio weights is taken into account in the statistical inference. A variant of the Fama and French (2018) 6-factor model, with a monthly updated version of the usual value spread, emerges as the dominant model.

DOI

10.1017/s0022109019000589

Volume

55

Issue

6

Pages

1840-1874

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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