Professor Roger Ibbotson is one of the most respected and influential researchers of the current era. His book “Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation” is a classic and often serves as a reference for information about capital market returns. Therefore we always pay attention to his publications. His actual work, “Popularity – A Bridge between Classical and Behavioral Finance”, which is written with Thomas M. Idzorek, Paul D. Kaplan, and James X. Xiong, is now available on SSRN.

In their work, authors explain the term “Popularity” from an asset pricing point and show how “Popularity” can be a broad umbrella under which nearly all market premiums and anomalies (including the traditional value and small-cap) can fall. They develop a formal asset pricing model that incorporates the central idea of “Popularity”, which they call the “popularity asset pricing model” (PAPM). Based on this model, they predict characteristics as a company’s brand, reputation, and perceived competitive advantage to be new equity factors.

It’s a long read, but we at Quantpedia really recommended it for all equity portfolio managers …

Authors: Ibbotson, Idzorek, Kaplan, Xiong

Title: Popularity: A Bridge between Classical and Behavioral Finance