Cross Section of KOSPI Returns Based on Cash Flow Risk Factors Open Access

This paper introduces two risk factors which are the covariance between long-run consumption growth and cash flows and the duration of cash flow, and investigates how these factors serve to explain the KOSPI return risk premiums. Based on our empirical results comparing the proposed two-factor cash flow model with the standard benchmark models such as CAPM and Fama-French 3-factor model (FF-3F), using KOSPI equity including de-listed stocks, the cash flow model explains 74.7% of the cross-section of equity risk premium while CAPM and FF-3F model explains 41.9% and 64.1% to the maximum, respectively, showing that the cash-flow model is superior in explaining the risk premium factor structure compared with the benchmark models. Also, the pricing error is only 4% in the two-factor cash flow model, while CAPM and FF-3F are 7.7% and 4.7%, respectively, indicating the cash flow model outperforms the standard benchmark models in pricing error as well. These results can be interpreted that the cross section of the equity risk premium is related to a firm’s cash flow and long-run consumption, and therefore the growth rate of consumption in the long run rather than contemporaneous consumption growth rate has a greater influence on the determination of the risk premium.