We investigate the risk-return relation for 13 Western European stock markets, mainly old EU member states. So far, little attention has been given to Europe as most studies focus on the US stock market. We construct conditional returns and conditional risk measures using factors that are based upon a large number of macro-finance variables. We find that it is important to account for country specific, euro area, as well as global macro-finance factors when determining the conditional return and volatility. So, the European stock markets are international in their risk behavior. The risk-return trade-off is generally negative. We also find evidence of time-variation in the risk-return trade-off across the states of the economy. Yet, the state of the economy is not directly linked to the business cycle. The risk-return trade-off is weaker (less negative) in the unusual state. Quantile regressions show that the trade-off is strongest at the lowest quantile of the conditional return.
Our findings have important implications for international risk analysis and portfolio construction. As economic conditions change rapidly and play an important role in the risk-return trade-off of European markets, investors should take this into account when constructing portfolios.