THE ROLE OF PENSION FUNDS IN FINANCING GREEN GROWTH INITIATIVES

A vast literature focuses on the predictability of U.S. and international stock returns using macroe- conomic variables, such as the short government interest rate or the yield spread between defaultable and government bonds. For instance, Ferson and Harvey (1993) nd that returns on international stock indexes are predictable using macroeconomic indicators as conditioning variables. More strikingly, Ferson and Harvey (1999) nd that broad economic variables explain the cross-sectional variation in U.S. individual stock returns better than the Fama and French (1993) empirical factors. Avramov and Chordia (2006) extend this literature by showing that substantial alphas are derived from choosing individual stocks based on macroeconomic conditioning variables. These...