Asymmetric stock market volatility and the cyclical behavior of expected returns

Recent explanations of aggregate stock market fluctuations suggest that countercyclical stock market volatility is consistent with rational asset evaluations. In this paper, I develop a framework to study the causes of countercyclical stock market volatility. I find that countercyclical risk premia do not imply countercyclical return volatility. Instead, countercyclical stock volatility occurs if risk premia increase more in bad times than they decrease in good times, thereby inducing price–dividend ratios to fluctuate more in bad times than in good. The business cycle asymmetry in the investors’ attitude toward discounting future cash flows plays a novel and critical role in many rational explanations of asset price fluctuations.