Nonexistent Moments of Earnings Growth
收入增长中不存在的矩
ABSTRACT This study addresses the limitations of traditional earnings risk measures, which often rely on moments such as variance, skewness, and kurtosis. For heavy‐tailed distributions, these moments may not exist, challenging such analyses. We propose robust conditional Pareto exponents as novel measures of earnings risk, with accompanying estimation and inference methods. Using UK NESPD and US PSID data, we find (1) moments often fail to exist; (2) tail risk rises over…