Predicting Betas: Two new methods

Abstract

Betas play a central role in modern finance. The estimation of betas from historical data and their extrapolation into the future is of considerable practical interest. We propose two new methods: the first is a direct generalization of the method in Blume (1975), and the second is based on Procrustes rotation in phase space. We compare their performance with various competitors and draw some conclusions.systematic risk, beta coefficients, risk prediction, Procustes rotation