Empirical Tests of Asset Pricing Models with Individual Assets: Resolving the Errors-in-Variables Bias in Risk Premium Estimation

To attenuate an inherent errors-in-variables bias, portfolios are widely employed to test asset pricing models; but portfolios might mask relevant risk- or return-related features of individual stocks. We propose an instrumental variables approach that allows the use of individual stocks as test assets, yet delivers consistent estimates of ex post risk premiums. This estimator also yields well-specified tests in small samples. The market risk premium under the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) and the liquidity-adjusted CAPM, premiums on risk factors under the Fama-French three- and five-factor models, and the Hou, Xue, and Zhang (2015) four-factor model are all insignificant after controlling for asset characteristics.