Score contribution per author:
α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count
Is the value spread useful for forecasting returns on quantitative equity strategies for country selection? To test this, we examine a sample of 120 country-level equity strategies replicated within 72 stock markets for the years 1996–2017. The value spread is a powerful and robust predictor of strategy returns in the cross-section, subsuming other methods based on momentum, reversal, or seasonality. Going long (short) the strategies with the broadest (narrowest) value spread produces significant four-factor model alphas, markedly outperforming an equal-weighted benchmark of all of the strategies. The results are robust to many considerations.