Disentangling Anomalies: Risk Versus Mispricing
Fisher College of Business Working Paper No. 2020-03-029
Charles A. Dice Working Paper No. 2020-29
68 Pages Posted: 1 Dec 2020 Last revised: 30 Jun 2022
Date Written: June 29, 2022
Abstract
Systematic mispricing primarily affects speculative stocks and predominantly results in overpricing, predicting lower average returns. Because speculative stocks overlap with stocks deemed risky by rational models, failing to control for exposure to systematic mispricing can bias tests of risk-return tradeoffs. Controlling for systematic mispricing, we recover robust positive risk-return relations for many cross-sectional risk proxies, including low-risk and distress anomalies. We also recover robust positive illiquidity- return relations. We provide a unifying framework explaining numerous puzzles arising from empirical failures of standard pricing models, and show empirical risk-return relations supporting rational models can be recovered by accounting for time-varying common mispricing.
Keywords: systematic risk, anomalies, mispricing, sentiment, beta, illiquidity, low-risk anomalies, distress
JEL Classification: G12, G14, D84
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation