Open Source Cross-Sectional Asset Pricing

We provide data and code that successfully reproduces nearly all cross-sectional stock return predictors. Our 319 characteristics draw from previous meta-studies, but we differ by comparing our t-stats to the original papers’ results. For the 161 characteristics that were clearly significant in the original papers, 98% of our long-short portfolios find t-stats above 1.96. For the 44 characteristics that had mixed evidence, our reproductions find t-stats of 2 on average. A regression of reproduced t-stats on original long-short t-stats finds a slope of 0.88 and an R2 of 82%. Mean returns are monotonic in predictive signals at the characteristic level. The remaining 114 characteristics were insignificant in…