IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/empfin/v17y2010i3p313-331.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A century of equity premium predictability and the consumption-wealth ratio: An international perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Della Corte, Pasquale
  • Sarno, Lucio
  • Valente, Giorgio

Abstract

This paper re-examines the predictive ability of the consumption-wealth ratio (cay) on the equity premium using hand-collected annual data spanning one century for four major economies. In addition to statistical tests of out-of-sample forecast accuracy, we measure the economic value of the predictive information in cay in a stylized asset allocation strategy. We find that cay does not contain predictive power prior to World War II, when a structural break occurs for all countries. In the postwar period, while statistical tests provide mixed evidence, economic criteria uncover substantial predictive power in cay, further enhanced when allowing for economically meaningful restrictions.

Suggested Citation

  • Della Corte, Pasquale & Sarno, Lucio & Valente, Giorgio, 2010. "A century of equity premium predictability and the consumption-wealth ratio: An international perspective," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 313-331, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:empfin:v:17:y:2010:i:3:p:313-331
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927-5398(09)00085-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Della Corte, Pasquale & Sarno, Lucio & Thornton, Daniel L., 2008. "The expectation hypothesis of the term structure of very short-term rates: Statistical tests and economic value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 158-174, July.
    2. Martin Lettau & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, 2008. "Reconciling the Return Predictability Evidence," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1607-1652, July.
    3. Ivo Welch & Amit Goyal, 2008. "A Comprehensive Look at The Empirical Performance of Equity Premium Prediction," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1455-1508, July.
    4. Clarida, Richard H. & Sarno, Lucio & Taylor, Mark P. & Valente, Giorgio, 2003. "The out-of-sample success of term structure models as exchange rate predictors: a step beyond," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 61-83, May.
    5. Owen Lamont, 1998. "Earnings and Expected Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(5), pages 1563-1587, October.
    6. Paye, Bradley S. & Timmermann, Allan, 2006. "Instability of return prediction models," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 274-315, June.
    7. Fang Xu, 2005. "Does Consumption-Wealth Ratio Signal Stock Returns? - VECM Results for Germany," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 3(30), pages 1-13.
    8. Jeremy Berkowitz & Lutz Kilian, 2000. "Recent developments in bootstrapping time series," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 1-48.
    9. Alvin Tan & Graham Voss, 2003. "Consumption and Wealth in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 79(244), pages 39-56, March.
    10. Hahn, Jaehoon & Lee, Hangyong, 2006. "Interpreting the predictive power of the consumption-wealth ratio," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 183-202, March.
    11. Campbell, John Y & Shiller, Robert J, 1988. " Stock Prices, Earnings, and Expected Dividends," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(3), pages 661-676, July.
    12. Giorgio Valente & Lucio Sarno, 2005. "Modelling and forecasting stock returns: exploiting the futures market, regime shifts and international spillovers," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(3), pages 345-376.
    13. Clark, Todd E. & McCracken, Michael W., 2001. "Tests of equal forecast accuracy and encompassing for nested models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 85-110, November.
    14. Marquering, Wessel & Verbeek, Marno, 2004. "The Economic Value of Predicting Stock Index Returns and Volatility," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(2), pages 407-429, June.
    15. Hodrick, Robert J, 1992. "Dividend Yields and Expected Stock Returns: Alternative Procedures for Inference and Measurement," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(3), pages 357-386.
    16. Inoue, Atsushi & Kilian, Lutz, 2006. "On the selection of forecasting models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 130(2), pages 273-306, February.
    17. John Y. Campbell & Samuel B. Thompson, 2008. "Predicting Excess Stock Returns Out of Sample: Can Anything Beat the Historical Average?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1509-1531, July.
    18. Pasquale Della Corte & Lucio Sarno & Ilias Tsiakas, 2009. "An Economic Evaluation of Empirical Exchange Rate Models," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(9), pages 3491-3530, September.
    19. Martin Lettau & Sydney Ludvigson, 2001. "Consumption, Aggregate Wealth, and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 815-849, June.
    20. Hlawitschka, Walter, 1994. "The Empirical Nature of Taylor-Series Approximations to Expected Utility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 713-719, June.
    21. Jonathan Ingersoll & Ivo Welch, 2007. "Portfolio Performance Manipulation and Manipulation-proof Performance Measures," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(5), pages 1503-1546, 2007 17.
    22. Keim, Donald B. & Stambaugh, Robert F., 1986. "Predicting returns in the stock and bond markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 357-390, December.
    23. Andrew Ang & Geert Bekaert, 2007. "Stock Return Predictability: Is it There?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(3), pages 651-707.
    24. Martin Lettau & Sydney C. Ludvigson, 2004. "Understanding Trend and Cycle in Asset Values: Reevaluating the Wealth Effect on Consumption," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 276-299, March.
    25. Philippe Jorion & William N. Goetzmann, 1999. "Global Stock Markets in the Twentieth Century," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(3), pages 953-980, June.
    26. Martin Lettau & Sydney Ludvigson, 2001. "Resurrecting the (C)CAPM: A Cross-Sectional Test When Risk Premia Are Time-Varying," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(6), pages 1238-1287, December.
    27. Rapach, David E. & Wohar, Mark E., 2006. "In-sample vs. out-of-sample tests of stock return predictability in the context of data mining," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 231-247, March.
    28. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1989. "Business conditions and expected returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 23-49, November.
    29. Lettau, Martin & Ludvigson, Sydney C., 2005. "Expected returns and expected dividend growth," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 583-626, June.
    30. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:3:y:2005:i:30:p:1-13 is not listed on IDEAS
    31. Romer, Christina D., 1994. "Remeasuring Business Cycles," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 54(3), pages 573-609, September.
    32. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    33. Emilio Fernandez-Corugedo & Simon Price & Andrew Blake, 2003. "The dynamics of consumers' expenditure: the UK consumption ECM redux," Bank of England working papers 204, Bank of England.
    34. Dueker, Michael & Neely, Christopher J., 2007. "Can Markov switching models predict excess foreign exchange returns?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 279-296, February.
    35. West, Kenneth D. & Edison, Hali J. & Cho, Dongchul, 1993. "A utility-based comparison of some models of exchange rate volatility," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(1-2), pages 23-45, August.
    36. Schmeling, Maik, 2009. "Investor sentiment and stock returns: Some international evidence," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 394-408, June.
    37. Hui Guo, 2006. "On the Out-of-Sample Predictability of Stock Market Returns," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(2), pages 645-670, March.
    38. Rime, Dagfinn & Sarno, Lucio & Sojli, Elvira, 2010. "Exchange rate forecasting, order flow and macroeconomic information," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 72-88, January.
    39. Brennan, Michael J. & Xia, Yihong, 2005. "tay's as good as cay," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 1-14, March.
    40. Romer, Christina, 1986. "Spurious Volatility in Historical Unemployment Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(1), pages 1-37, February.
    41. John Y. Campbell, Robert J. Shiller, 1988. "The Dividend-Price Ratio and Expectations of Future Dividends and Discount Factors," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 1(3), pages 195-228.
    42. Ferson, Wayne E & Harvey, Campbell R, 1991. "The Variation of Economic Risk Premiums," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 385-415, April.
    43. Jeff Fleming & Chris Kirby & Barbara Ostdiek, 2001. "The Economic Value of Volatility Timing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(1), pages 329-352, February.
    44. Breen, William & Glosten, Lawrence R & Jagannathan, Ravi, 1989. " Economic Significance of Predictable Variations in Stock Index Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 44(5), pages 1177-1189, December.
    45. Christina D. Romer, 1999. "Changes in Business Cycles: Evidence and Explanations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 23-44, Spring.
    46. McCracken, Michael W., 2007. "Asymptotics for out of sample tests of Granger causality," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 719-752, October.
    47. Campbell, John Y., 1987. "Stock returns and the term structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 373-399, June.
    48. Horowitz, Joel L., 2001. "The Bootstrap," Handbook of Econometrics, in: J.J. Heckman & E.E. Leamer (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 52, pages 3159-3228, Elsevier.
    49. Stock, James H & Watson, Mark W, 1993. "A Simple Estimator of Cointegrating Vectors in Higher Order Integrated Systems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(4), pages 783-820, July.
    50. John Y. Campbell & N. Gregory Mankiw, 1989. "Consumption, Income, and Interest Rates: Reinterpreting the Time Series Evidence," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1989, Volume 4, pages 185-246, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    51. Yufeng Han, 2006. "Asset Allocation with a High Dimensional Latent Factor Stochastic Volatility Model," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(1), pages 237-271.
    52. Andrade, Philippe & Bruneau, Catherine & Gregoir, Stephane, 2005. "Testing for the cointegration rank when some cointegrating directions are changing," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 124(2), pages 269-310, February.
    53. Abhyankar, Abhay & Sarno, Lucio & Valente, Giorgio, 2005. "Exchange rates and fundamentals: evidence on the economic value of predictability," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 325-348, July.
    54. Quintos, Carmela E., 1998. "Stability tests in error correction models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 289-315, February.
    55. repec:fth:harver:1435 is not listed on IDEAS
    56. Lance A. Fisher & Graham M. Voss, 2004. "Consumption, Wealth and Expected Stock Returns in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 80(251), pages 359-372, December.
    57. Atsushi Inoue & Lutz Kilian, 2005. "In-Sample or Out-of-Sample Tests of Predictability: Which One Should We Use?," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(4), pages 371-402.
    58. Pontiff, Jeffrey & Schall, Lawrence D., 1998. "Book-to-market ratios as predictors of market returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 141-160, August.
    59. Dimitris Politis & Halbert White, 2004. "Automatic Block-Length Selection for the Dependent Bootstrap," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 53-70.
    60. Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2002. "Limited Asset Market Participation and the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(4), pages 825-853, August.
    61. Bekaert, Geert & Hodrick, Robert J, 1992. "Characterizing Predictable Components in Excess Returns on Equity and Foreign Exchange Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 467-509, June.
    62. Hui Guo, 2009. "Data Revisions And Out‐Of‐Sample Stock Return Predictability," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(1), pages 81-97, January.
    63. Leitch, Gordon & Tanner, J Ernest, 1991. "Economic Forecast Evaluation: Profits versus the Conventional Error Measures," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(3), pages 580-590, June.
    64. John H. Cochrane, 2008. "The Dog That Did Not Bark: A Defense of Return Predictability," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1533-1575, July.
    65. Lettau, Martin & Ludvigson, Sydney C., 2005. "tay's as good as cay: Reply," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 15-22, March.
    66. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1988. "Dividend yields and expected stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-25, October.
    67. Tano Santos & Pietro Veronesi, 2006. "Labor Income and Predictable Stock Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(1), pages 1-44.
    68. Shin, Yongcheol, 1994. "A Residual-Based Test of the Null of Cointegration Against the Alternative of No Cointegration," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(1), pages 91-115, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rapach, David & Zhou, Guofu, 2013. "Forecasting Stock Returns," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 328-383, Elsevier.
    2. Yufeng Han, 2010. "On the Economic Value of Return Predictability," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 11(1), pages 1-33, May.
    3. Hai Lin & Daniel Quill & Henk Berkman, 2016. "Information diffusion and the predictability of New Zealand stock market returns," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 56(3), pages 749-785, September.
    4. Ferreira, Miguel A. & Santa-Clara, Pedro, 2011. "Forecasting stock market returns: The sum of the parts is more than the whole," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 514-537, June.
    5. Christopher J. Neely & David E. Rapach & Jun Tu & Guofu Zhou, 2014. "Forecasting the Equity Risk Premium: The Role of Technical Indicators," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(7), pages 1772-1791, July.
    6. Mykola Babiak & Jozef Barunik, 2020. "Deep Learning, Predictability, and Optimal Portfolio Returns," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp677, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    7. Phan, Dinh Hoang Bach & Sharma, Susan Sunila & Narayan, Paresh Kumar, 2015. "Stock return forecasting: Some new evidence," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 38-51.
    8. Michael Cooper & Huseyin Gulen, 2006. "Is Time-Series-Based Predictability Evident in Real Time?," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(3), pages 1263-1292, May.
    9. Schrimpf, Andreas, 2010. "International stock return predictability under model uncertainty," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(7), pages 1256-1282, November.
    10. Lawrenz, Jochen & Zorn, Josef, 2017. "Predicting international stock returns with conditional price-to-fundamental ratios," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 159-184.
    11. Atanasov, Victoria, 2018. "World output gap and global stock returns," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 181-197.
    12. Maio, Paulo, 2016. "Cross-sectional return dispersion and the equity premium," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 87-109.
    13. Rapach, David E. & Wohar, Mark E., 2006. "In-sample vs. out-of-sample tests of stock return predictability in the context of data mining," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 231-247, March.
    14. Davide Pettenuzzo & Francesco Ravazzolo, 2016. "Optimal Portfolio Choice Under Decision‐Based Model Combinations," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(7), pages 1312-1332, November.
    15. Lin, Hai & Wang, Junbo & Wu, Chunchi, 2014. "Predictions of corporate bond excess returns," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 123-152.
    16. Cem Cakmakli & Dick van Dijk, 2010. "Getting the Most out of Macroeconomic Information for Predicting Stock Returns and Volatility," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 10-115/4, Tinbergen Institute.
    17. Gonçalo Faria & Fabio Verona, 2016. "Forecasting the equity risk premium with frequency-decomposed predictors," Working Papers de Economia (Economics Working Papers) 06, Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa.
    18. Thomadakis, Apostolos, 2016. "Do Combination Forecasts Outperform the Historical Average? Economic and Statistical Evidence," MPRA Paper 71589, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. José Afonso Faias & Tiago Castel-Branco, 2018. "Out-Of-Sample Stock Return Prediction Using Higher-Order Moments," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 21(06), pages 1-27, September.
    20. Çakmaklı, Cem & van Dijk, Dick, 2016. "Getting the most out of macroeconomic information for predicting excess stock returns," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 650-668.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:empfin:v:17:y:2010:i:3:p:313-331. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jempfin .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.