New Methods for the Cross-Section of Returns

Abstract The cross-section and time series of stock returns contains a wealth of information about the stochastic discount factor (SDF), the object that links cash flows to prices. A large empirical literature has uncovered many candidate factors—many more than seem plausible—to summarize the SDF. This special volume of the Review of Financial Studies presents recent advances in extracting information from both the cross-section and the time series, in dealing with issues of replication and false discoveries, and in applying innovative machine-learning techniques to identify the most relevant asset pricing factors. Our editorial summarizes what we learn and offers a few suggestions to guide future work in this exciting new era of big data and empirical asset pricing.