Abstract
In this paper, we investigate whether shocks to real estate markets constitute an important state variable in the context of the Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM) and, hence, explain the cross-sectional variation in average returns of the 25 Fama-French portfolios sorted on size and book-to-market. We document that a real estate factor can explain much of the underlying risk inherent in the Fama-French size- and value-factors. In comparison to the Fama-French three-factor model, our alternative two-factor model including the real estate factor next to the market factor performs quite well in pricing the cross section of equity returns. Moreover, we provide evidence that the real estate factor is not captured by other sources of risk applied in the context of the ICAPM, such as shifts in credit market conditions and the stance of monetary policy, aggregate distress risk, and news related to future GDP growth.
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