Size and Book to Market Effects: Further Evidence from the French Case

The objective of this paper is to study the market, SMB, HML and The leverage factors inexplaining cross-sectional returns.We provide the first empirical analysis of Ferguson and Shockley (2003) theoretical frame work on the French stock market. Book to market and size, variables which a recorrelated with leverage, will appear to explain returns.Our main result is that the leverage factor doesn’t subsume the SMB and HML factors. Incross-sectional regressions, only the size premium is statistically significant and help explaining returns.In time- series regressions, the three factors (SMB, HML andleverage),with the market portfolio,do a good job. This result suggests that the leverage portfolio has an additional improvement of the model.