Int. J. Business Innovation and Research, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2018 357 Copyright © 2018 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. An empirical test of the select multifactor asset pricing models with GMM Shweta Bajpai* and Anil K. Sharma Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, 247667, India Email: shwetabajpai11@gmail.com Email: anilfdm@iitr.ac.in *Corresponding author Abstract: This study focuses on the empirical testing of the two multifactor asset pricing models, namely, the Fama-French three-factor and Carhart four-factor models in the Indian capital market. The study builds on the constituent stocks of the Nifty 500 index to have an adequate representation of the Indian market. The study employs the generalised method of moments (GMM) to address the problem of endogeneity, and to have the consistent estimates. The results show that the four-factor model explains the cross-section of expected stock returns better than the three-factor model. However, the momentum factor is not significant for a majority of the periods of the study. Keywords: multifactor asset pricing models; generalised method of moments; GMM; Indian capital market; Nifty 500. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Bajpai, S. and Sharma, A.K. (2018) ‘An empirical test of the select multifactor asset pricing models with GMM’, Int. J. Business Innovation and Research, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp.357–380. Biographical notes: Shweta Bajpai is a research scholar in the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India. Her research work focuses on capital market, derivatives market and securities market. Anil K. Sharma is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India. He has several research publications to his credit in the various areas of finance like corporate finance, capital markets, derivative markets, financial inclusion, etc. 1 Introduction In the late seventies, numerous studies criticised the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) for its empirical failure to explain the risk-return relationship. At the same time, various other studies found out different factors that explain the cross-section of expected returns of the stock. Like, Basu (1977) and Banz (1981) detected the significance of earning to price ratio (E/P ratio) and the size factor (market capitalisation) in the return generating