What Moves the Stock and Bond Markets? A Variance Decomposition for Long-Term Asset Returns

This paper uses a vector autoregressive model to decompose excess stock and 10-year bond returns into changes in expectations of future stock dividends, inflation, short-term real interest rates, and excess stock and bond returns. In monthly postwar U.S. data, stock and bond returns are driven largely by news about future excess stock returns and inflation, respectively. Real interest rates have little impact on returns, although they do affect the short-term nominal interest rate and the slope of the term structure. These findings help to explain the low correlation between excess stock and bond returns.     

Causal relations among stock returns and macroeconomic variables in a small,open economy

We investigate to what extent important results on relations among stock returns and macroeconomic factors from major markets are valid in a small, open economy by utilizing the multivariate vector autoregressive (VAR) approach on Norwegian data. Unlike many previous studies, which use a different methodology on other European markets, we establish several significant links. Consistent with US and Japanese findings, real interest rate changes affect both stock returns and inflation, and the stock market responds accurately to oil price changes. On the other hand, the stock market shows a delayed response to changes in domestic real activity.     

Stock Returns Under High Inflation and Interest Rates: Evidence from the Brazilian Market

We analyze the relationship of high inflation and interest rates with stock returns in Brazil from May 1986 to May 2011, during which Brazil experienced subperiods of both high inflation (May 1986-June 1994) and relative monetary stability (July 1994-May 2011). The result in the total period is dominated by high inflation volatility, and the findings suggest a bidirectional relationship between stock returns and inflation. During the high-inflation subperiod, interest rates are relevant to explain future changes in inflation and stock returns. Under low inflation, movements in interest rates are better anticipated by equity investors, suggesting higher market efficiency than in high-inflation circumstances.     

Expected Inflation, Interest Rates, and Stock Returns

This paper documents a long-lived asymmetrical relationship between interest rate changes and subsequent stock returns. Drops in interest rates are followed by twelve months of excess stock returns, while increases in interest rates have little effect. The results are robust to the choices of short-term interest rate and stock index. These findings cannot be explained by Geske and Roll's [10] reversed causality argument; nor do they appear to result from periods of unusual interest rates or stock returns. Since interest rate changes are generally used as proxies for changes in expected inflation, the results provide new insights into previous research on inflation and stock returns, and there are important implications for the literature on time-varying risk premia.     

A Reexamination of Real Stock Returns,Real Interest Rates,Real Activity,and Inflation: Evidence from a Large Data Set

Using the informational sufficiency procedure from Forni and Gambetti (2014) along with data from McCracken and Ng (2014), we update the results of Lee (1992) and find that his vector autoregression (VAR) is informationally deficient. To correct this problem, we estimate a factor augmented VAR (FAVAR) and analyze the differences once informational deficiency is corrected with an emphasis on the relationship between real stock returns and inflation. In particular, we examine Modigliani and Cohn's (1979) inflation illusion hypothesis, Fama's (1983) proxy hypothesis, and the “anticipated policy hypothesis.”     

Common stock returns,real activity,money, and inflation: Some international evidence

This paper tests whether the negative relationship between real stock returns and inflation in the United States is in fact proxying for a positive relationship between stock returns and real activity variables in six major industrial countries over 1966–1979. Consistent with Fama's ‘proxy-effect’ hypothesis, we document a negative relationship between inflation and real activity and a positive one between real stock returns and real activity variables. Real activity variables dominate money growth rates and expected and unexpected inflation in explaining real stock returns. A puzzling result that still remains is the positive role of money and the negative role of expected inflation in explaining these real stock returns in all major industrial countries.     

Inflation,real returns and capital investment

We find evidence for the hypothesis of Mundell (1963) and Tobin (1965) that the expected real return component of interest rates is negatively related to the expected inflation component. In the Mundell-Tobin model, the variation in expected real returns is caused by the variation in expected inflation. Our evidence suggests, however, that the variation in expected real returns is more fundamentally an outcome of the capital expenditures process. Equilibrium expected real returns vary directly with capital expenditures in order to induce equilibrium allocations of resources between consumption and investment. This positive relation between expected real returns and real activity, which comes out of the real sector, combines with a negative relation between expected inflation and real activity, which is traced to the monetary sector, thus inducing the negative relation between expected inflation and expected real returns predicted by Mundell and Tobin but explained in terms of a model much different from theirs.     

Stock returns,inflation and interest rates in the United Kingdom

The Fisherian theory of interest asserts that a fully perceived change in inflation would be reflected in nominal interest rates and stock returns in the same direction in the long run. This paper examines the Fisherian hypothesis of asset returns using alternative techniques of linear regression, and vector error correction models to examine the nature of the relationship between stock returns and inflation in the UK. Consistent with the Fisherian hypothesis, empirical evidence in the linear regression model suggests a positive and statistically significant relationship between stock returns and inflation, which regards common stock as a good hedge against inflation. The results based on the unit root and cointegration tests indicate a long-run reliable relationship between price levels, share prices, and interest rates which could be interpreted as the long-run determinants of stock returns. The findings also suggest a bidirectional relationship between stock returns and inflation. The evidence of a significant Fisher effect is robust across model specifications.     

The Fiscal and Monetary Linkage between Stock Returns and Inflation

Contrary to economic theory and common sense, stock returns are negatively related to both expected and unexpected inflation. We argue that this puzzling empirical phenomenon does not indicate causality. Instead, stock returns are negatively related to contemporaneous changes in expected inflation because they signal a chain of events which results in a higher rate of monetary expansion. Exogenous shocks in real output, signalled by the stock market, induce changes in tax revenue, in the deficit, in Treasury borrowing and in Federal Reserve “monetization” of the increased debt. Rational bond and stock market investors realize this will happen. They adjust prices (and interest rates) accordingly and without delay. Although expected inflation seems to have a negative effect on subsequent stock returns, this could be an empirical illusion, since a spurious causality is induced by a combination of: (a) a reversed adaptive inflation expectations model and (b) a reversed money growth/stock returns model. If the real interest rate is not a constant, using nominal interest proxies for expected inflation is dangerous, since small changes in real rates can cause large and opposite percentage changes in stock prices.     

实际股票收益率与通货膨胀率关系的实证研究

股票收益率与通货膨胀率之间的关系至今仍无定论.采用1991年1月到2011年8月的月度数据,运用VAR模型对我国的股票收益率与通货膨胀率之间的关系进行实证分析,结果发现不论是预期的通货膨胀还是非预期的通货膨胀与股票实际收益率都是负相关关系.表明费雪效应在我国不成立,股票并不是对冲通货膨胀风险的理想工具.     

Empirical relationship between macroeconomic volatility and stock returns: Evidence from Latin American markets

Emerging market stock returns have been characterized as having higher volatility than returns in the more developed markets. But previous studies give little attention to the fundamentals driving the reported levels of volatility. This paper investigates whether dynamics in key macroeconomic indicators like exchange rates, interest rates, industrial production and money supply in four Latin American countries significantly explain market returns. The MSCI world index and the U.S. 3-month T-bill yield are also included to proxy the effects of global variables. Using a six-variable vector autoregressive (VAR) model, the study finds that the global factors are consistently significant in explaining returns in all the markets. The country variables are found to impact the markets at varying significance and magnitudes. These findings may have important implications for decision-making by investors and national policymakers.     

Public Information Arrival and the Fisher Effect in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Stock and Bond Markets in Turkey

We examine the impact of inflation on nominal stock returns and interest rates in Turkey's emerging economy, which has a moderately high, persistent, and volatile inflation rate. Empirical evidence indicates that Turkey's inflation increased more than nominal stock returns and interest rates, implying that real returns to investors declined during our sample period. Among the different sector indexes we study, the financials sector serves as the best hedge against expected inflation, and the Fisher effect appears to hold only for this sector. We also find that public information arrival plays an important role, especially in the stock market.     

Stock Returns,Inflation, and Economic Activity: The Survey Evidence

The primary purpose of this paper is the use of survey expectations data to study the empirical relationships between stock returns, inflation, and economic activity. In the course of this analysis and as a secondary purpose, the paper discusses general considerations involving the use of expectations proxies and makes recommendations for econometric techniques. The main empirical findings are: (1) Hypothesized relationships between expected economic activity and expected inflation do not in practice appear to be important in explaining the negative relationship between expected inflation and stock returns. (2) Nevertheless, the survey data do lend some support to the hypothesis of a quantity theory relationship between expected inflation and expected economic activity, holding constant monetary growth. (3) The cross-forecaster dispersion of economic activity forecasts, a proxy for real uncertainty, appears to be a significant determinant of stock returns. Inclusion of this variable eliminates the negative impact of expected inflation.     

REIT Stock Prices with Inflation Hedging and Illusion

Employing dividend yield decomposition, this paper explores the inflation illusion and inflation hedging effects on REIT stock prices. Results show that changes in expected inflation explain a large share of the time series variation of the mispricing component of the dividend yield. Also, while both inflation hedging and inflation illusion effects exist for REITs, the inflation illusion effect tends to dominate the hedging effect during the 1980 to 2008 period. These results suggest that investors are unable to quickly reconcile changes in discount rates and dividend growth rates associated with inflation into stock prices. The findings also provide an alternative explanation as to why short-term REIT returns are often negatively related to expected inflation.     

Capital Gains, Dividend Yields, and Expected Inflation

One explanation for the negative relationship between short-horizon stock returns and inflation is that inflation proxies (inversely) for expected future real output. In this paper, I examine the possibility that inflation also proxies for variation in real price/dividend ratios (excess returns). I show that when the covariance between real price/dividend ratios and inflation is nonzero, the relationship between returns and expected inflation differs for the two components of returns: dividend yields and capital gains returns. My empirical evidence demonstrates that dividend yields and capital gains are related differently to expected inflation in U.S. and foreign markets.     

A VARMA Analysis of the Causal Relations Among Stock Returns,Real Output,and Nominal Interest Rates

Previous research has documented a negative relation between common stock returns and inflation. Recently, Fama 3 and Geske and Roll 6 have argued that this relation results from a more fundamental one between real activity and expected inflation. Stock returns, they argue, signal changes in real activity, which in turn affect expected inflation. However, unlike Fama, Geske and Roll argue that changes in real activity result in changes in money supply growth, which in turn affect expected inflation. Empirical tests have analyzed separately each link in the proposed causal chain. In this article, we investigate simultaneously the relations among stock returns, real activity, inflation, and money supply changes using a vector autoregressive moving average (VARMA) model. Our empirical results strongly support Geske and Roll's reversed causality model.     

The Relation between Stock Prices and Inflationary Expectations: The International Evidence

This paper provides empirical evidence on the relation between stock returns and inflationary expectations for nine countries over the period 1971–80. The Fisherian assumption that real returns are independent of inflationary expectations is soundly rejected for each major stock market of the world. Using interest rates as a proxy for expected inflation, our data provide consistent support for the Geske and Roll model whose basic hypothesis is that stock price movements signal (negative) revisions in inflationary expectations. Finally, a weak real interest rate effect was found for some of these countries.     

News and the cross-section of expected corporate bond returns

We study the cross-section of expected corporate bond returns using an inter-temporal CAPM (ICAPM) with three-factors: innovations in future excess bond returns, future real interest rates and future expected inflation. Our test assets are a broad range of corporate bond market index portfolios. We find that two factors – innovations about future inflation and innovations about future real interest rates – explain the cross-section of expected corporate bond returns in our sample. Our model provides an alternative to the ad hoc risk factor models used, for example, in evaluating the performance of bond mutual funds.     

Asset Returns and Inflation in Response to Supply,Monetary, and Fiscal Disturbances

This paper identifies sources of asset returns (stock returns and interest rates) and inflation relations. We find that the relation between asset returns and inflation is driven by three types of disturbances to the economy. We interpret them as due to supply disturbances and two types of demand—monetary and fiscal—disturbances. In post-war U.S. data, supply and fiscal disturbances drive a negative stock return-inflation relation, whereas monetary disturbances generate a positive stock return-inflation relation. However, all three types of disturbances generate a negative interest rate-inflation relation. Depending on the interaction of the three types of shocks, we observe different correlations between asset returns and inflation in post- and pre-World War II U.S. data.     

Dynamic Interactions among the Stock Market,Federal Funds Rate,Inflation, and Economic Activity

This paper examines the dynamic interactions among the equity market, economic activity, inflation, and monetary policy under three monetary policy regimes using bivariate and multivariate vector autoregressive cointegrating specifications. The bivariate results for the real stock returns‐inflation pair weakly support a negative correlation in the 1970s and 1980s. While the bivariate findings suggest a weak, negative relationship between real returns and the federal funds in the 1970s and 1980s, the multivariate findings strongly support short‐term linkages in the 1970s. There appears to be no consistent dynamic relationship between monetary policy and stock prices in that the relationship differs across monetary regimes.