A Novel Downside Risk Measure and Expected Returns

Several studies have found that the cross-section of stock returns reflects a risk premium for bearing downside risk; however, existing measures of downside risk have poor power for predicting returns. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel measure of downside risk, the ES-implied beta, to improve the prediction of the cross-section of asset returns. The ES-implied beta explains stock returns over the same period as well as the widely used downside beta, but also has strong predictive power over future returns. In the empirical analysis, although the widely used downside beta shows a weak relation with future expected returns, the ES-implied beta implies a statistically and economically significant risk premium of 0.5 percent per month. The predictive power of the ES-implied beta is not explained by the cross-sectional effects from the CAPM beta, size, book-to-market ratio, momentum, coskewness, cokurtosis or liquidity beta, nor does it depend on the design of the empirical analysis.