Extending Fama-French Factors with Interest Rate Changes: An Empirical Study of USA Versus Emerging Markets

Abstract

This paper evaluates the effects of interest rate change on bank stock returns in the USA versus emerging markets by analysing the sensitivity of equally-weighted bank stock portfolios in the context of asset pricing models. The research makes a meaningful contribution to the existing literature on asset pricing models by incorporating interest rate change (Stone, 1974) into the Fama and French (2015) five-factor empirical model. Our dataset of monthly bank stock returns from January 2010 to June 2020 revealed that while the Fama-French (2015) asset pricing model offered a valid result of equity returns in the USA, size and investment factors had little impact on stock returns for banks in emerging markets. The volatility of interest rate had significant effect for USA and India. So, inclusion of interest rate change along with the Fama-French factors in the pricing of bank stocks added an important dimension and had important implications for policy makers and investors.

Keywords: five-factor model; capital asset pricing model; CAPM; interest rate risk; bank stocks; emerging markets