by Ron Alquist, AQR Capital Management LLC / Ronen Israel, AQR Capital Management, LLC / Tobias J. Moskowitz, Yale University, Yale SOM, AQR Capital, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
In the earliest days of empirical work in academic finance, the size effect was the first market anomaly to challenge the standard asset pricing model and prompt debates about market efficiency. The notion that small stocks have higher average returns than large stocks, even after risk-adjustment, was a pathbreaking discovery, one that for decades has been taken as an unwavering fact of financial markets.
