International evidence on global economic uncertainty and cross-sectional stock returns

Abstract

We investigate the predictive role of global economic uncertainty exposure at the firm level in the top-five developed stock markets outside the US. Applying portfolio-level sorting strategies, we find that exposure to global idiosyncratic uncertainty exhibits stronger predictive power than either total or common uncertainty. Further, the idiosyncratic uncertainty betas are negatively related to future stock returns over multiple trading horizons in the UK, Europe, and Canada, and this relationship cannot be explained by common risk factors, including market, size, value, investment, profitability, and momentum. Our findings are robust to the use of firm-level Fama–MacBeth regressions and additional trading horizons.