Dayong Huang

Money and the C-CAPM

We consider asset pricing in a monetary economy where liquid assets are held to lower transaction costs. The ensuing model extends the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the consumption CAPM by deriving real money growth as an additional factor determining returns. Empirically, the two model versions compare favorably to other theoretical asset pricing models along several dimensions, supporting the traditional intertemporal asset pricing perspective. A value premium arises because value firms are sensitive to liquidity shocks but growth firms are not. Although no alternative factor drives out the money growth factor, the conditioning CAY factors of Lettau and Ludvigson (2001b) add explanatory power.

EVALUATION OF LINEAR ASSET PRICING MODELS BY IMPLIED PORTFOLIO PERFORMANCE

We adapt the metric of Kandel and Stambaugh (1995) to evaluate linear asset pricing models. The “KS-ratio” criterion rates a model’s usefulness based on the mean portfolio return a mean-variance decision maker obtains for any variance choice by using the model for optimal portfolio decisions. It is equivalent to a cross-sectional GLS R-square criterion and to a measure of minimum distance between the asset and factor frontiers. We assess the KS-ratio compared to the HJ-distance and ad hoc goodness-of-fit evaluation criteria with simulated returns. We then apply the various criteria to evaluate nine prominent asset pricing models with actual data.

Industrial Electricity Usage and Stock Returns

The growth rate of industrial electricity usage predicts future stock returns up to 1 year with an R 2 of 9%. High industrial electricity usage today predicts low stock returns in the future, consistent with a countercyclical risk premium. Industrial electricity usage tracks the output of the most cyclical sectors. Our findings bridge a gap between the asset pricing literature and the business cycle literature, which uses industrial electricity usage to gauge production and output in real time. Industrial electricity growth compares favorably with traditional financial variables, and it outperforms Cooper and Priestley’s output gap measure in real time.