Are the Fama-French factors proxying news related to GDP growth? The Australian evidence

Annette Nguyen, Robert Faff, Philip Gharghori*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

14 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Inspired by Vassalou (J Financ Econ 68:47-73, 2003), we investigate the contention that the Fama and French (J Financ Econ 33:3-56, 1993) model's ability to explain the cross sectional variation in equity returns is because the Fama-French factors are proxying for risk associated with future GDP growth in the Australian equities market. To assess the validity of Vassalou's findings, we augment the CAPM and the Fama-French model with a GDP growth factor and run system regressions of the GDP-enhanced models using the GMM approach. Our results suggest that news about future GDP growth is not priced in equity returns and that any ability that SMB and HML exhibit in explaining equity returns is not because they contain information about future GDP growth.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)141-158
Number of pages18
JournalReview of Quantitative Finance and Accounting
Volume33
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2009
Externally publishedYes

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