Idiosyncratic Consumption Risk and the Cross Section of Asset Returns

This paper investigates the importance of idiosyncratic consumption risk for the cross‐sectional variation in asset returns. We find that besides the rate of aggregate consumption growth, the cross‐sectional variance of consumption growth is also a priced factor. This suggests that consumers are not fully insured against idiosyncratic consumption risk, and that asset returns reflect their attempts to reduce their exposure to this risk. The resulting two‐factor consumption‐based asset pricing model significantly outperforms the CAPM, and its performance compares favorably with that of the Fama–French three‐factor model.     

Risk Premia in Foreign Currency Futures

This paper tests the uncorrelatedness of increments of daily foreign currency futures prices and derives implications for risk premia based on a heteroscedasticity-robust variance ratio test. There is evidence suggesting the existence of a time-varying risk premia. Moreover, the results suggest that currency futures price is not an unbiased predictor of currency spot price on corresponding maturity date of currency futures contract. The paper also applies a heteroscedasticity-adjusted Box-Pierce Q test to the same data set for comparison.     

The Cross‐Section of Credit Risk Premia and Equity Returns

We explore the link between a firm's stock returns and credit risk using a simple insight from structural models following Merton ( 1974 ): risk premia on equity and credit instruments are related because all claims on assets must earn the same compensation per unit of risk. Consistent with theory, we find that firms' stock returns increase with credit risk premia estimated from CDS spreads. Credit risk premia contain information not captured by physical or risk‐neutral default probabilities alone. This sheds new light on the “distress puzzle”—the lack of a positive relation between equity returns and default probabilities—reported in previous studies.     

Heterogeneous Beliefs, the Term Structure and Time-varying Risk Premia

This paper demonstrates theoretically and empirically that one possible economic explanation of the dynamics of the term structure of interest rates is the time-varying heterogeneous beliefs about future economic conditions. Assuming that each agent forms heterogeneous expectations about both his income shock and others’ beliefs about their income shocks each period, the paper illustrates that heterogeneous beliefs generate time-varying risk premia of the term structure in a closed-form solution. Motivated by this theory, several empirical tests are conducted using the cross-sectional mean and dispersion of belief indices that are extracted as the differences between non-judgemental econometric forecasts based on diffusion indices in Stock and Watson (J Bus Econ Stat, 2002) and professional survey forecasts. It is shown that (a) an increase in the mean belief about inflation steepens the yield curve, (b) the mean and dispersion of interest rate beliefs help explain the mean and the stochastic volatility of the term structure, suggesting that time-varying risk premia may be explained by endogenous uncertainty caused by heterogeneous beliefs in the economy.I am indebted to Mordecai Kurz, Timothy Cogley and Narayana Kocherlakota for constant support and extensive discussions that inspired this work. I would like to thank Randall Moore for providing the Blue Chip financial forecast data. The financial support from the Smith Richardson Foundation to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research is gratefully acknowledged.     

Consumption, Dividends, and the Cross Section of Equity Returns

We show that aggregate consumption risks embodied in cash flows can account for the puzzling differences in risk premia across book‐to‐market, momentum, and size‐sorted portfolios. The dynamics of aggregate consumption and cash flow growth rates, modeled as a vector autoregression, are used to measure the consumption beta of discounted cash flows. Differences in these cash flow betas account for more than 60% of the cross‐sectional variation in risk premia. The market price for risk in cash flows is highly significant. We argue that cash flow risk is important for interpreting differences in risk compensation across assets.     

Trade Network Centrality and Currency Risk Premia

I uncover an economic source of exposure to global risk that drives international asset prices. Countries that are more central in the global trade network have lower interest rates and currency risk premia. To explain these findings, I present a general equilibrium model in which central countries' consumption growth is more exposed to global consumption growth shocks. This causes the currencies of central countries to appreciate in bad times, resulting in lower interest rates and currency risk premia. Empirically, central countries' consumption growth covaries more with world consumption growth, further validating the proposed mechanism.     

Expected Returns,Time-varying Risk,and Risk Premia

A new empirical model for intertemporal capital asset pricing is presented that allows both time-varying risk premia and betas where the latter are identified from the dynamics of the conditional covariance of returns. The model is more successful in explaining the predictable variations in excess returns when the returns on the stock market and corporate bonds are included as risk factors than when the stock market is the single factor. Although changes in the covariance of returns induce variations in the betas, most of the predictable movements in returns are attributed to changes in the risk premia.     

Risk Premia in Foreign Currency Futures: A Reexamination

This paper reexamines the significant autocorrelation results of foreign currency futures reported by Liu and He [12] in this journal. It argues that extremely thin trading early in the life of individual futures contracts induces unreliable results in [12]. Moreover, the Monte Carlo results clarify the power performance between Lo and MacKinlay's [13] variance ratio tests and Diebold's [3] Q-statistics; both tests are used by Liu and He.     

Time Varying Term Premia and Traditional Hypotheses about the Term Structure

Empirical evidence of time varying term premia in bond returns is frequently interpreted as evidence against the Expectations Hypothesis. This paper shows that the Expectations Hypothesis can actually imply time varying term premia if the time frame for which the Expectations Hypothesis holds differs from the return measurement period. Furthermore, many of the properties of these term premia are consistent with those of observed term premia. These results are important because they imply that the case against the Expectations Hypothesis is weaker than claimed in the empirical literature.     

Predictability of Emerging Market Local Currency Bond Risk Premia

This article investigates the source of predictability of emerging market (EM) local currency bond risk premia by using a dynamic factor approach based on a large panel of economic and financial time series. We find strong predictable variation in EM local currency excess bond returns that is associated with macroeconomic activity. We provide evidence that the main predictor variables are the factors based on real economic activity that are highly correlated with measures of industrial and manufacturing production; however, factors based on global financial factors also contain information about the future local currency bond returns. The predictive power of the extracted factors is both statistically significant and economically important. Our research has important implications for policymakers and pension fund managers.     

Conditioning Variables and the Cross Section of Stock Returns

Previous studies identify predetermined variables that predict stock and bond returns through time. This paper shows that loadings on the same variables provide significant cross-sectional explanatory power for stock portfolio returns. The loadings are significant given the three factors advocated by Fama and French (1993) and the four factors of Elton, Gruber, and Blake (1995). The explanatory power of the loadings on lagged variables is robust to various portfolio grouping procedures and other considerations. The results carry implications for risk analysis, performance measurement, cost-of-capital calculations, and other applications.     

Forecast Dispersion and the Cross Section of Expected Returns

Recent work by Diether, Malloy, and Scherbina (2002) has established a negative relationship between stock returns and the dispersion of analysts' earnings forecasts. I offer a simple explanation for this phenomenon based on the interpretation of dispersion as a proxy for unpriced information risk arising when asset values are unobservable. The relationship then follows from a general options‐pricing result: For a levered firm, expected returns should always decrease with the level of idiosyncratic asset risk. This story is formalized with a straightforward model. Reasonable parameter values produce large effects, and the theory's main empirical prediction is supported in cross‐sectional tests.     

On the Term Structure of Default Premia in the Swap and LIBOR Markets

Existing theories of the term structure of swap rates provide an analysis of the Treasury–swap spread based on either a liquidity convenience yield in the Treasury market, or default risk in the swap market. Although these models do not focus on the relation between corporate yields and swap rates (the LIBOR–swap spread), they imply that the term structure of corporate yields and swap rates should be identical. As documented previously (e.g., in Sun, Sundaresan, and Wang (1993)) this is counterfactual. Here, we propose a model of the default risk imbedded in the swap term structure that is able to explain the LIBOR–swap spread. Whereas corporate bonds carry default risk, we argue that swap contracts are free of default risk. Because swaps are indexed on "refreshed"-credit-quality LIBOR rates, the spread between corporate yields and swap rates should capture the market's expectations of the probability of deterioration in credit quality of a corporate bond issuer. We model this feature and use our model to estimate the likelihood of future deterioration in credit quality from the LIBOR–swap spread. The analysis is important because it shows that the term structure of swap rates does not reflect the borrowing cost of a standard LIBOR credit quality issuer. It also has implications for modeling the dynamics of the swap term structure.     

Differences of Opinion and the Cross Section of Stock Returns

We provide evidence that stocks with higher dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts earn lower future returns than otherwise similar stocks. This effect is most pronounced in small stocks and stocks that have performed poorly over the past year. Interpreting dispersion in analysts' forecasts as a proxy for differences in opinion about a stock, we show that this evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that prices will reflect the optimistic view whenever investors with the lowest valuations do not trade. By contrast, our evidence is inconsistent with a view that dispersion in analysts' forecasts proxies for risk.     

Analyst Forecasts and the Cross Section of European Stock Returns

We examine revisions to earnings forecasts by equity analysts and their role in predicting stock returns. We provide evidence that European stocks with net upward revised forecasts earn higher future returns than otherwise similar stocks. This effect is not concentrated in small stocks, stocks with low analyst coverage, or stocks with low book‐to‐market ratios. We find differences in the return continuation patterns of stocks with upward versus downward revisions, namely, bad news travels quickly, but good news travels slowly. This result is consistent with investors' attaching greater significance to poor earnings forecasts, but adopting a wait‐and‐see approach to good news.     

Incomplete Consumption Risk Sharing and Currency Risk Premiums

This article studies the impact of imperfect consumption risksharing across countries on the formation of time-varying riskpremiums in the foreign exchange market and on their cross-sectionaldifferences. These issues are addressed within the frameworkof the Constantinides and Duffie (1996) model applied to a multicountryworld. The article shows that the cross-country variance ofconsumption growth rates is counter-cyclical and that this featureof consumption data is mildly helpful for currency pricing.In particular, unlike the standard CCAPM, the new model is ableto generate currency risk premiums at lower values of risk aversionand provide certain explanatory power for cross-sectional differencesin currency returns.     

交易所国债期限风险溢价的实证研究

本文考察了上海证券交易所国债期限风险溢价的时间变化特征及决定因素。实证结果显示，债券剩余期限越长，平均风险溢价越高；通过对不同期限债券组合的风险溢价序列建立回归模型，发现长短期利差及风险溢价的前期值对中长期债券期限风险溢价的时变性具有明显的解释能力。     

Macroeconomic Sources of Risk in the Term Structure

We develop a new way of modeling time variation in term premia, based on the stochastic discount factor model of asset pricing. The joint distribution of excess U.S. bond returns of different maturity and the observable fundamental macroeconomic factors is modeled using multivariate GARCH with conditional covariances in the mean to capture the term premia. By testing the assumption of no arbitrage we derive a specification test of our model. We estimate the contribution made to the term premia at different maturities through real and nominal sources of risk. From the estimated term premia we recover the term structure of interest rates and examine how it varies through time. Finally, we examine whether the reported failures of the rational expectations hypothesis can be attributed to an omitted time-varying term premium.     

Term Premia and Interest Rate Forecasts in Affine Models

The standard class of affine models produces poor forecasts of future Treasury yields. Better forecasts are generated by assuming that yields follow random walks. The failure of these models is driven by one of their key features: Compensation for risk is a multiple of the variance of the risk. Thus risk compensation cannot vary independently of interest rate volatility. I also describe a broader class of models. These "essentially affine" models retain the tractability of standard models, but allow compensation for interest rate risk to vary independently of interest rate volatility. This additional flexibility proves useful in forecasting future yields.