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Asian Review of Financial Research Vol.32 No.4 pp.513-561
A Firm-Level Analysis of the Cross-Sectional Relation between Expected Returns and Expected Idiosyncratic Volatility in the Korean Stock Market
Sangkyu Lee School of Management, Kyung Hee University
Young Sik Kim School of Management, Kyung Hee University
Key Words : Idiosyncratic Volatility Anomaly,EGARCH,Conditional Out-of-Sample Expected Idiosyncratic Volatility,Conditional in-Sample Expected Idiosyncratic Volatility,Look-Ahead-Bias

Abstract

Using monthly firm-level data from the Korean stock market from January 1992 to June 2016, we examine the cross-sectional relation between expected returns and expected idiosyncratic volatility. Considering the time varying property of idiosyncratic volatility, we use EGARCH model to estimate the conditional out-of-sample expected idiosyncratic volatility to avoid the problem of look-ahead-bias. Our main results are as follows. Our equal-weighted portfolio analysis that exclude any control variables exhibits that as conditional out-of-sample expected idiosyncratic volatility increase, expected returns tend to decrease. According to the equal-weighted Fama-MacBeth cross-sectional regression that includes systematic beta, size, book-to-market ratio factor, momentum, liquidity, return reversal and asset growth on the firm level, conditional out-of-sample expected idiosyncratic volatility consistently have a significantly negative relation with expected returns. This relation is also observed in the periods after the currency crisis and the global financial crisis, in the non-January sample, and in both up-phases and down-phases. Interestingly, we observe a spurious positive relation induced by look-ahead bias between contemporaneous conditional in-sample expected idiosyncratic volatility and expected returns. Our empirical findings suggest that the significantly negative relation between conditional out-of-sample expected idiosyncratic volatility and expected returns observed in the Korean stock market may be an idiosyncratic volatility anomaly.
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