Is there a low-risk anomaly across countries?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the parallels between the country-level and the stock-level low-risk anomalies. The inter-market variation in returns do not follow the intra-market patterns. Country-level returns are positively related to standard deviation, value at risk, and idiosyncratic volatility, although the effect is largely explained by cross-national value, size and momentum effects. The risk-return relationship seems to be stronger in the cases idiosyncratic risk and is almost non-existent in the case of systematic risk (market beta). Furthermore, additional sorting on value at risk may markedly improve the performance of size and value strategies at the country level. The investigations are based on the cross-section analysis of 78 national stock markets for the period 1999–2014.