IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jfinan/v57y2002i5p1981-1995.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Survival Bias and the Equity Premium Puzzle

Author

Listed:
  • Haitao Li
  • Yuewu Xu

Abstract

Previous authors have raised the concern that there could be serious survival bias in the observed U.S. equity premium. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we argue that the survival bias in the U.S. data is unlikely to be significant. To reach this conclusion, we introduce a general framework for modeling survival and derive a mathematical relationship between the ex ante survival probability and the average survival bias. This relationship reveals the fundamental difficulty facing the survival argument: High survival bias requires an ex ante probability of market failure, which seems unrealistically high given the history of world financial markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Haitao Li & Yuewu Xu, 2002. "Survival Bias and the Equity Premium Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 1981-1995, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:jfinan:v:57:y:2002:i:5:p:1981-1995
    DOI: 10.1111/0022-1082.00486
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-1082.00486
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/0022-1082.00486?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    2. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
    3. 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.
    4. Duffie, Darrell & Lando, David, 2001. "Term Structures of Credit Spreads with Incomplete Accounting Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(3), pages 633-664, May.
    5. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1988. "Permanent and Temporary Components of Stock Prices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(2), pages 246-273, April.
    6. Duffie, Darrell & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1999. "Modeling Term Structures of Defaultable Bonds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(4), pages 687-720.
    7. Robert A. Jarrow & David Lando & Stuart M. Turnbull, 2008. "A Markov Model for the Term Structure of Credit Risk Spreads," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Financial Derivatives Pricing Selected Works of Robert Jarrow, chapter 18, pages 411-453, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kaustia, Markku & Lehtoranta, Antti & Puttonen, Vesa, 2013. "Does sophistication affect long-term return expectations? Evidence from financial advisers' exam scores," SAFE Working Paper Series 3, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    2. Bhanot, Karan, 2005. "What causes mean reversion in corporate bond index spreads? The impact of survival," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 1385-1403, June.
    3. Marco Taboga, 2002. "The Realized Equity Premium has been Higher than Expected: Further Evidence," CeRP Working Papers 29, Center for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies, Turin (Italy).
    4. Fernandez, Pablo, 2004. "Are calculated betas good for anything?," IESE Research Papers D/555, IESE Business School.
    5. Campbell, John Y., 2003. "Consumption-based asset pricing," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 803-887, Elsevier.
    6. Prat, Georges, 2013. "Equity risk premium and time horizon: What do the U.S. secular data say?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 76-88.
    7. Geoffrey J. Warren, 2008. "Implications for Asset Pricing Puzzles of a Roll‐over Assumption for the Risk‐Free Asset," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 8(3‐4), pages 125-157, September.
    8. Ritter, Jay R., 2005. "Economic growth and equity returns," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 13(5), pages 489-503, November.
    9. Fernandez, Pablo, 2006. "The equity premium in finance and valuation textbooks," IESE Research Papers D/657, IESE Business School.
    10. Michele Bagella & Leonardo Becchetti & Rocco Ciciretti, 2007. "Earning Forecast Error in US and European Stock Markets," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 105-122.
    11. Fernandez, Pablo, 2005. "La prima de riesgo del mercado (market risk premium)," IESE Research Papers D/585, IESE Business School.
    12. Fernandez, Pablo, 2004. "Market risk premium: Required, historical and expected," IESE Research Papers D/574, IESE Business School.

    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. Gregory Connor & Lisa R. Goldberg & Robert A. Korajczyk, 2010. "Portfolio Risk Analysis," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9224.
    2. Chava, Sudheer & Jarrow, Robert, 2008. "Modeling loan commitments," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 11-20, March.
    3. Nan Chen & S. G. Kou, 2009. "Credit Spreads, Optimal Capital Structure, And Implied Volatility With Endogenous Default And Jump Risk," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 343-378, July.
    4. Chen, An-Sing & Chu, Hsiang-Hui & Hung, Pi-Hsia & Cheng, Miao-Sih, 2020. "Financial risk and acquirers' stockholder wealth in mergers and acquisitions," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    5. Giesecke, Kay & Longstaff, Francis A. & Schaefer, Stephen & Strebulaev, Ilya, 2011. "Corporate bond default risk: A 150-year perspective," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 233-250.
    6. Duffie, Darrell, 2005. "Credit risk modeling with affine processes," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 2751-2802, November.
    7. Chiarella, Carl & Fanelli, Viviana & Musti, Silvana, 2011. "Modelling the evolution of credit spreads using the Cox process within the HJM framework: A CDS option pricing model," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 208(2), pages 95-108, January.
    8. Tingqiang Chen & Suyang Wang, 2023. "Incomplete information model of credit default of micro and small enterprises," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(3), pages 2956-2974, July.
    9. Samuel Chege Maina, 2011. "Credit Risk Modelling in Markovian HJM Term Structure Class of Models with Stochastic Volatility," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2011, January-A.
    10. Suresh M. Sundaresan, 2000. "Continuous‐Time Methods in Finance: A Review and an Assessment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1569-1622, August.
    11. Moraux, Franck, 2004. "Modeling the business risk of financially weakened firms: A new approach for corporate bond pricing," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 47-61.
    12. Nystrom, Kaj & Skoglund, Jimmy, 2006. "A credit risk model for large dimensional portfolios with application to economic capital," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(8), pages 2163-2197, August.
    13. Tomoaki Shouda, 2005. "Dynamical analysis of corporate bonds based on the yield spread term-quality surface," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 12(4), pages 307-332, December.
    14. Chen, Hui & Xu, Yu & Yang, Jun, 2021. "Systematic risk, debt maturity, and the term structure of credit spreads," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(3), pages 770-799.
    15. Jennie Bai & Pierre Collin-Dufresne & Robert S. Goldstein & Jean Helwege, 2012. "On bounding credit event risk premia," Staff Reports 577, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    16. Jose Giancarlo Gasha & Mr. Andre O Santos & Mr. Jorge A Chan-Lau & Mr. Carlos I. Medeiros & Mr. Marcos R Souto & Christian Capuano, 2009. "Recent Advances in Credit Risk Modeling," IMF Working Papers 2009/162, International Monetary Fund.
    17. Xin Guo & Robert A. Jarrow & Yan Zeng, 2009. "Credit Risk Models with Incomplete Information," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 34(2), pages 320-332, May.
    18. Fontana, Claudio & Schmidt, Thorsten, 2018. "General dynamic term structures under default risk," Stochastic Processes and their Applications, Elsevier, vol. 128(10), pages 3353-3386.
    19. Batten, Jonathan A. & Jacoby, Gady & Liao, Rose C., 2014. "Corporate yield spreads and real interest rates," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 89-100.
    20. repec:wyi:journl:002109 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Leonard Tchuindjo, 2007. "Pricing of Multi-Defaultable Bonds with a Two-Correlated-Factor Hull-White Model," Applied Mathematical Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 19-39.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:bla:jfinan:v:57:y:2002:i:5:p:1981-1995. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/afaaaea.html .

    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.