Measurement Errors of Expected-Return Proxies and the Implied Cost of Capital

62 Pages Posted: 5 Dec 2011 Last revised: 11 Feb 2015

See all articles by Charles C. Y. Wang

Charles C. Y. Wang

Harvard University - Accounting & Control Unit; European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)

Date Written: January 2015

Abstract

Despite their popularity as proxies of expected returns, the implied cost of capital's (ICC) measurement error properties are relatively unknown. Through an in-depth analysis of a popular implementation of ICCs by Gebhardt, Lee, and Swaminathan (2001) (GLS), I show that ICC measurement errors can be not only nonrandom and persistent, but can also be associated with firms' risk or growth characteristics, implying that ICC regressions are likely confounded by spurious correlations. Moreover, I document that biases in GLS' measurement errors are driven not only by analysts' systematic forecast errors but also by functional form assumptions, so that correcting for the former - a primary focus of the ICC literature - is insufficient by itself. From these findings, I argue that the choice between ICCs and realized returns involves a tradeoff between bias and efficiency, and suggest that realized returns should be used in conjunction with ICCs to make more robust inferences about expected returns.

Keywords: Expected returns, implied cost of capital, measurement errors

JEL Classification: D03, G30, O15, P34

Suggested Citation

Wang, Charles C. Y., Measurement Errors of Expected-Return Proxies and the Implied Cost of Capital (January 2015). Harvard Business School Accounting & Management Unit Working Paper No. 13-098, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1967706 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1967706

Charles C. Y. Wang (Contact Author)

Harvard University - Accounting & Control Unit ( email )

Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
United States

European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) ( email )

c/o the Royal Academies of Belgium
Rue Ducale 1 Hertogsstraat
1000 Brussels
Belgium

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