Relationship between labor-income risk and average return: Empirical evidence from the Japanese stock market

In Japan as in the United States, stocks that are more sensitive to changes in the monthly growth rate of labor income earn a higher return on average. Whereas the stock-index beta can only explain 2% of the cross-sectional variation in the average return on stock portfolios, the stock-index beta and the labor beta together explain 75% of the variation. We find that the labor beta drives out the size effect but not the book-to-market-price effect that is documented in the literature.