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Journal of Finance Vol. 56 No. 4 2001

Mental Accounting, Loss Aversion, and Individual Stock Returns

Nicholas Barberis1; Ming Huang2,3

1 University of Chicago · 2 Midwest Orthopaedic Research Foundation · 3 Stanford University

Abstract

We study equilibrium firm‐level stock returns in two economies: one in which investors are loss averse over the fluctuations of their stock portfolio, and another in which they are loss averse over the fluctuations of individual stocks that they own. Both approaches can shed light on empirical phenomena, but we find the second approach to be more successful: In that economy, the typical individual stock return has a high mean and excess volatility, and there is a large value premium in the cross section which can, to some extent, be captured by a commonly used multifactor model.

DOI
10.1111/0022-1082.00367
Volume
56
Issue
4
Pages
1247-1292
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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