There is mixed evidence of a positive relationship between the stock market risk and return. We reexamine this critical implication of asset pricing theory using fresh data from China's stock market, which is largely segmented from the rest of the global financial market. Using formal variable selection methods and a comprehensive set of predictor variables, we identify conditional market variance, scaled market prices, and inflation as crucial determinants of equity premiums. The estimated simple risk-return relationship exhibits downward omitted variable bias, which underlines the importance of considering multiple factors to explain the variation in equity premiums. We cannot wholly attribute the three-factor conditional equity premium model to data mining, as Guo, Sanni, and Yu (2022) select the same model for the U.S. stock market. These findings challenge existing asset pricing models and provide valuable guidance for future theoretical research.

Does the ancient farming culture shape the risk-taking behavior of households today? Using a dataset covering over 130,000 households from a Chinese national survey, our study examines the relationship between the culture of rice cultivation and the financial behavior of modern households. We find that households in regions with a higher rate of historical rice cultivation are more likely to invest in the financial market and buy lottery, but less likely to purchase insurance. We also find that the rice area has more households with risk preferences consistent with prospect theory expectations. To account for omitted variable bias, we use average regional rainfall and downstream distance to ancient irrigation systems as instrumental variables for rice cultivation, and our results remain robust. We find that the rice effect cannot be explained by regional economic development, traditional Confucian values, or ethnic diversity. To explore potential mechanisms, we find that households in rice regions are more likely to borrow money from friends and relatives and have interest waived, and historical commercial development has also been influenced by the rice culture.

We estimate the causal effect of income on happiness using a unique dataset of Chinese twins. This allows us to address omitted variable bias and measurement errors. Our findings show that individual income has a large positive effect on happiness, with a doubling of income resulting in an increase of 0.26 scales or 0.37 standard deviations in the four-scale happiness measure. We also find that income matters most for males and the middle-aged. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for various biases when studying the relationship between socioeconomic status and subjective well-being.

We empirically evaluate 20 prominent contributions to a broad range of areas in the empirical corporate finance literature. We assemble the necessary data and then apply a single, simple econometric method, the connected-groups approach of Abowd, Karmarz, and Margolis (1999), to appraise the extent to which prevailing empirical specifications explain variation of the dependent variable, differ in composition of fit arising from various classes of independent variables, and exhibit resistance to omitted variable bias and other endogeneity problems. In particular, we identify and estimate the role of observed and unobserved firm- and manager-specific characteristics in determining primary features of corporate governance, financial policy, payout policy, investment policy, and performance. Observed firm characteristics do best in explaining market leverage and CEO pay level and worst for takeover defenses and outcomes. Observed manager characteristics have relatively high power to explain CEO contract design and low power for firm focus and investment policy. Estimated specifications without firm and manager fixed effects do poorly in explaining variation in CEO duality, corporate control variables, and capital expenditures, and best in explaining executive pay level, board size, market leverage, corporate cash holdings, and firm risk. Including manager and firm fixed effects, along with firm and manager observables, delivers the best fit for dividend payout, the propensity to adopt antitakeover defenses, firm risk, board size, and firm focus. In terms of source, unobserved manager attributes deliver a high proportion of explained variation in the dependent variable for executive wealth-performance sensitivity, board independence, board size, and sensitivity of expected executive compensation to firm risk. In contrast, unobserved firm attributes provide a high proportion of variation explained for dividend payout, antitakeover defenses, book and market leverage, and corporate cash holdings. In part, these results suggest where empiricists could look for better proxies for what current theory identifies as important and where theorists could focus in building new models that encompass economic forces not contained in existing models. Finally, we assess the relevance of omitted variables and endogeneity for conventional empirical designs in the various subfields. Including manager and firm fixed effects significantly alters inference on primary explanatory variables in 17 of the 20 representative subfield specifications.