Book-to-Market Equity, Distress Risk, and Stock Returns

This paper examines the relationship between book-to-market equity, distress risk, and stock returns. Among firms with the highest distress risk as proxied by Ohlson's (1980) O-score, the difference in returns between high and low book-to-market securities is more than twice as large as that in other firms. This large return differential cannot be explained by the three-factor model or by differences in economic fundamentals. Consistent with mispricing arguments, firms with high distress risk exhibit the largest return reversals around earnings announcements, and the book-to-market effect is largest in small firms with low analyst coverage.