Discussion of “Investor recognition and stock returns”

Lehavy and Sloan (2008, Review of Accounting Studies) note that prior studies find that earnings and cash flows explain only a small portion of the cross-sectional variation in stock return. This motivates them to investigate empirically the ability of a behavioral model of capital market equilibrium proposed by Merton (1987, Journal of Finance, 42, 483–510) to explain the remaining variation in stock returns. Their primary findings show that security value is, as predicted, increasing in investor recognition of the security and that investor recognition is incremental to and more important than cash flows in explaining the cross-sectional variation of stock returns. While the research question is intriguing and well motivated, a number of methodological limitations may limit the reliability of the findings/interpretations. In this paper, I first evaluate the motivation and potential contribution of the Lehavy and Sloan (2008) study. I then outline methodological limitations underlying the study and offer ways of overcoming them. In the final section, I state my conclusions.