Legal regime, size, and liquidity factors in asset pricing

Abstract

This study introduces a new legal regime factor into the international valuation literature which exploits the differences between civil and common law origin countries. This builds directly on the concept that institutions both build and shape culture and economic outcomes and takes account of the pervasive differences between civil and common law countries worldwide La Porta et al (1998, 2002). This study contrasts the abilities of three prominent liquidity constructs, namely Amihud (2002) price-impact, Liu (2006) trading speed and volume-based turnover, in explaining the total trading costs in a sample of 62 equity markets spanning developed and developing countries as well as aggregated worldwide civil and common law universes. The evidence reveals that differences in legal origin of markets exert a pervasive effect on the liquidity generating process that transcends institutions across markets. Furthermore a world market universe is created from the constituent stocks of the top tier equity market indices from 60 countries worldwide leading to the construction of size and liquidity returns-based factors and a new legal regime factor. The results indicate that the four-factor legal regime CAPM outperform both other pricing models.

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ORCID for Bruce Hearn: orcid.org/0000-0001-9767-0198

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