To explain the variation in US asset returns in the 20th century, we solve an equilibrium model in which households face housing collateral constraints. An increase in the ratio of housing to human wealth loosens these constraints. It allows for more risk sharing and decreases the rate of return that households require for holding equity. This collateral mechanism can explain the time-variation...

The equity premium puzzle shows that using standard parameters and setup, the Consumption-based Capital Asset Pricing Model’s (CCAPM’s) prediction of the premium associated with systematic risk is out by an order of magnitude. The object of this paper is to consider the implications of each of the broad classes of explanations of the equity premium puzzle for resource allocation, welfare and po...

This paper analyzes the ability of both economic variables and moving-average rules to forecast the monthly U.S. equity premium using out-of-sample tests for 1960–2008. Both approaches provide statistically and economically significant out-of-sample forecasting gains, which are concentrated in U.S. business-cycle recessions. Nevertheless, economic variables and moving-average rules capture diff...

This paper investigates the ampli cation mechanism of the nancial accelerator on the equity premium in a production economy. To accomplish this, I incorporate the Gertler and Karadi (2011) type nancial accelerator into a medium-scale New Keynesian model with generalized recursive preferences. I nd that the nancial accelerator is a very plausible and new ampli cation mechanism for risk premia in...

Can the historical equity premium be explained as a rational equilibrium outcome when riskaverse agents with conventional preferences are faced with non-diversifiable sources of risk (e.g., from labor or entrepreneurial income), and when trading frictions prevent them from using financial assets to effectively self-insure transitory shocks? Our research suggests that it is difficult to generate...

This paper considers the measurement of the equity risk premium in financial markets. While there exists a vast amount of research into its behaviour, particularly in US markets, this is largely based on regression based techniques which do not capture well the dynamic and forward looking nature of the risk premium. In this paper the time variation of the unobserved risk premium is modelled by ...

This paper uses a general equilibrium model to study the source and reward of asymmetric volatility or skewness of market returns in an exchange economy. In particular, the dividend growth rate is modeled as a stochastic volatility process and the representative agent is characterized by Epstein-Zin preferences. The equilibrium equity premium, risk-free rate, and asymmetric volatility (measured...

This paper presents asset predictability evidence from the difference between implied and expected variances or variance risk premium that: (1) the variance difference measure predicts a significant positive risk premium across equity, bond, and credit markets; (2) the predictability is short-run, in that it peaks around one to four months and dies out as the horizon increases; and (3) such a s...

Since the equity premium as well as the risk-free rate puzzle question the concepts central to financial and economic modeling, we apply behavioral decision theory to asset pricing in view of solving these puzzles. U.S. stock market data for the period 1960-2003 and German stock market data for the period 1977-2003 show that emotional investors who act in accordance to Bell's (1985) disappointm...

Based on the fundamental equations of equity valuation, we derive here the relationship between the equity risk premium, duration and dividend yield. Aside from providing a logical foundation for the difference between the ex-ante and ex-post measures of the risk premium, the work leads to other outcomes, namely, but not specifically, (1) that the current, effective dividend policy is a signall...