Asset Pricing Model and the Liquidity Effect: Empirical Evidence in the Brazilian Stock Market

Abstract

This paper is aims to analyze whether a liquidity premium exists in the Brazilian stock market. As a second goal, we include liquidity as an extra risk factor in asset pricing models and test whether this factor is priced and whether stock returns were explained not only by systematic risk, as proposed by the CAPM, by Fama and French’s (1993) three-factor model, and by Carhart’s (1997) momentum-factor model, but also by liquidity, as suggested by Amihud and Mendelson (1986). To achieve this, we used stock portfolios and five measures of liquidity. Among the asset pricing models tested, the CAPM was the least capable of explaining returns. We found that the inclusion of size and book-to-market factors in the CAPM, a momentum factor in the three-factor model, and a liquidity factor in the four-factor model improve their explanatory power of portfolio returns. In addition, we found that the five-factor model is marginally superior to the other asset pricing models tested.