This study examines the capital asset pricing model developed by Sharpe (1965) Lintner (1966) as the
benchmark model in the asset pricing theory defining the first two moments as target variable. The
empirical findings indicate that Sharpe–Lintner CAPM is also inadequate for Pakistan‟s equity market
in explaining economically and statistically significant role of market risk for the determination of
expected return. In this study instead of identifying more risk factors, a detail analysis of single risk
factor is undertaken. The asset returns in Pakistan equity market deviate from normality indicating that
investors are concerned about the higher moments of return distribution. First, the standard model is
extended by taking higher moments into account. Second, the risk factors are allowed to vary over time
in the autoregressive process. For Pakistani equity market this study is an attempt to demonstrate the
benefits of conditional non-linear pricing behavior and results have shown some evidence of higher
order pricing factors associated with coskewness and cokurtosis. The result of unconditional non-linear
generalization of the model and the results demonstrate that in higher moment model the investor is
rewarded for coskewness risk. However, the test provides marginal support for reward of cokurtosis
risk. It is concluded that the modified form of Sharpe-Lintner CAPM used by Kraus and Litenberger
(1976) is successful to some extent with KSE data. Finally, the empirical usefulness of conditional
higher moments in explaining the cross-section of asset return is investigated. The results indicate that
conditional coskewness is important determinant of asset pricing and the asset pricing relationship
varies through time. The conditional cokurtosis explains the asset price relationship in limited way.
However we can not really say that the role of market return is sufficient in explaining economically
and statistically significant in explaining expected return. Intuitively the rapidly changing economic
environment of emerging markets has strong impact on asset pricing (Harvey, 1995). For more
comprehensive analysis of asset pricing, it is needed to identify other risk factors and information
variables that are able to explain expected return more adequately.