The equity premium implied by production

This paper studies the determinants of the equity premium as implied by producers’ first-order conditions. A simple closed form expression is presented for the Sharpe ratio as a function of investment volatility and technology parameters. Calibrated to the US postwar economy, the model can match the historical first and second moments of the market return and the risk-free interest rate. The model also generates a very volatile Sharpe ratio and market price of risk.     

Myopic loss aversion and the equity premium puzzle reconsidered

Benartzi and Thaler [The Quarterly Journal of Economics 110 (1995) 73–92] offer a quasi-rational explanation for the equity premium puzzle. We reconsider their methodology and, making a simple modification to it, find that their analysis is not robust.     

Disagreement and return predictability of stock portfolios

This paper provides evidence that portfolio disagreement measured bottom-up from individual-stock analyst forecast dispersions has a number of asset pricing implications. For the market portfolio, market disagreement mean-reverts and is negatively related to ex post expected market return. Contemporaneously, an increase in market disagreement manifests as a drop in discount rate. For book-to-market sorted portfolios, the value premium is stronger among high disagreement stocks. The underperformance by high disagreement stocks is stronger among growth stocks. Growth stocks are more sensitive to variations in disagreement relative to value stocks. These findings are consistent with asset pricing theory incorporating belief dispersion.     

巨灾风险债券溢价之谜的行为金融学解释

作为一种新型金融工具,巨灾风险债券自发行以来所附带的风险收益就远高于同等级传统债券的收益.尽管均值方差分析方法已证明"溢价之谜"确实存在,但从传统理论角度出发的研究并不能充分解释巨灾风险债券高溢价的成因.本文尝试用行为金融理论分析以获得较合理的解释补充.通过探讨投资者的心理、行为因素在巨灾风险债券溢价之谜中所起的重要作用,得出结论:风险厌恶、固定教育成本、模糊厌恶和羊群效应等行为导致了溢价之谜的出现.这些影响因素的发现不仅是对国际巨灾风险债券市场中的高溢价现象进行解释的重要依据,同时也为我国科学发行巨灾风险债券提供了思路.     

Habit formation and the equity–premium puzzle: a skeptical view

We argue that, ceteris paribus, introducing a habit that resolves the equity–premium puzzle is equivalent to increasing the Arrow-Pratt coefficient of relative risk aversion, AP-RRA. If we constrain the AP-RRA to a constant ‘acceptable’ level, the effect on the equity premium is quantitatively insignificant. In a dynamic setting, the fluctuations of the habit increase the equity premium, slightly, though generates unrealistic fluctuations in the risk-free interest rate. We conclude a habit is observationally equivalent, up to a first-order approximation, to a higher AP-RRA and to a preference shock. These effects cannot resolve the equity–premium puzzle.      

Banking and interest rates in monetary policy analysis: A quantitative exploration

The paper reconsiders the role of money and banking in monetary policy analysis by including a banking sector and money in an optimizing model otherwise of a standard type. The model is implemented quantitatively, with a calibration based on US data. It is reasonably successful in providing an endogenous explanation for substantial steady-state differentials between the interbank policy rate and (i) the collateralized loan rate, (ii) the uncollateralized loan rate, (iii) the T-bill rate, (iv) the net marginal product of capital, and (v) a pure intertemporal rate. We find a differential of over 3% p.a. between (iii) and (iv), thereby contributing to resolution of the equity premium puzzle. Dynamic impulse response functions imply pro- or counter-cyclical movements in an external finance premium that can be of quantitative significance. In addition, they suggest that a central bank that fails to recognize the distinction between interbank and other short rates could miss its appropriate settings by as much as 4% p.a. Also, shocks to banking productivity or collateral effectiveness call for large responses in the policy rate.     

Displacement risk and asset returns

We study asset-pricing implications of innovation in a general-equilibrium overlapping-generations economy. Innovation increases the competitive pressure on existing firms and workers, reducing the profits of existing firms and eroding the human capital of older workers. Due to the lack of inter-generational risk sharing, innovation creates a systematic risk factor, which we call “displacement risk.” This risk helps explain several empirical patterns, including the existence of the growth-value factor in returns, the value premium, and the high equity premium. We assess the magnitude of displacement risk using estimates of inter-cohort consumption differences across households and find support for the model.     

Rare disaster risk and the expected equity risk premium

Consistent with the predictions of rare disaster models, we find that a proxy for the time‐varying probability of rare disasters helps to explain fluctuations in expectations of the equity risk premium. Our proxy for disaster risk is a recently developed measure of global political instability, and the expected market risk premium is from Value Line analysts' expected stock returns. Consistent with long‐run risk models, uncertainty about expected GDP growth and expected consumption growth is also significantly positively related to the expected market risk premium. We obtain similar results when we use the earnings–price ratio and the dividend–price ratio as proxies for the expected market risk premium.     

Can Market Incompleteness Resolve Asset Pricing Puzzles?

Abstract:   This paper shows that the presence of persistent uninsurable risk concentrated in economic depressions has the potential to resolve two well‐known asset pricing puzzles. It is also shown that the presence of such risk in more normal economic expansions and recessions is likely to be much less relevant in determining equilibrium asset prices.