IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/empfin/v58y2020icp1-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Disaggregation and the equity premium puzzle

Author

Listed:
  • Wilson, Matthew S.

Abstract

Standard macroeconomic models cannot explain why stocks so greatly outperform bonds. However, this result depends on the use of aggregate consumption data. If markets are incomplete, then a representative agent might not exist and it is necessary to use consumption data at the household rather than aggregate level. In the household data, I fail to reject the Euler equation when the coefficient of relative risk aversion is as low as 2.7–3.8. This result is robust in a very general framework and I prove that many of the tests used in the literature are biased.

Suggested Citation

  • Wilson, Matthew S., 2020. "Disaggregation and the equity premium puzzle," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 1-18.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:empfin:v:58:y:2020:i:c:p:1-18
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jempfin.2020.05.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927539820300165
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jempfin.2020.05.002?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
    ---><---

    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. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    2. Constantinides, George M & Duffie, Darrell, 1996. "Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(2), pages 219-240, April.
    3. Garrett, Ian & Kamstra, Mark J. & Kramer, Lisa A., 2005. "Winter blues and time variation in the price of risk," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 291-316, March.
    4. Cogley, Timothy, 2002. "Idiosyncratic risk and the equity premium: evidence from the consumer expenditure survey," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 309-334, March.
    5. Narayana Kocherlakota & Luigi Pistaferri, 2009. "Asset Pricing Implications of Pareto Optimality with Private Information," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(3), pages 555-590, June.
    6. Mankiw, N. Gregory & Zeldes, Stephen P., 1991. "The consumption of stockholders and nonstockholders," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 97-112, March.
    7. Alon Brav & George M. Constantinides & Christopher C. Geczy, 2002. "Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumers and Limited Participation: Empirical Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(4), pages 793-824, August.
    8. Mankiw, N. Gregory, 1986. "The equity premium and the concentration of aggregate shocks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 211-219, September.
    9. Rietz, Thomas A., 1988. "The equity risk premium a solution," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 117-131, July.
    10. Alexis Akira Toda & Kieran Walsh, 2015. "The Double Power Law in Consumption and Implications for Testing Euler Equations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 123(5), pages 1177-1200.
    11. Gervais, Martin & Klein, Paul, 2010. "Measuring consumption smoothing in CEX data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(8), pages 988-999, November.
    12. Christian Julliard & Anisha Ghosh, 2012. "Can Rare Events Explain the Equity Premium Puzzle?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(10), pages 3037-3076.
    13. George M. Constantinides & Anisha Ghosh, 2017. "Asset Pricing with Countercyclical Household Consumption Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(1), pages 415-460, February.
    14. Heaton, John & Lucas, Deborah J, 1996. "Evaluating the Effects of Incomplete Markets on Risk Sharing and Asset Pricing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(3), pages 443-487, June.
    15. Alexis Akira Toda & Kieran James Walsh, 2017. "Fat tails and spurious estimation of consumption‐based asset pricing models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(6), pages 1156-1177, September.
    16. Chang, Eric C. & Huang, Roger D., 1990. "Time-Varying Return and Risk in the Corporate Bond Market," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 323-340, September.
    17. Robert J. Barro, 2006. "Rare Disasters and Asset Markets in the Twentieth Century," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(3), pages 823-866.
    18. Balduzzi, Pierluigi & Yao, Tong, 2007. "Testing heterogeneous-agent models: an alternative aggregation approach," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 369-412, March.
    19. Kris Jacobs, 1999. "Incomplete Markets and Security Prices: Do Asset‐Pricing Puzzles Result from Aggregation Problems?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(1), pages 123-163, February.
    20. Daniel Feenberg & Elisabeth Coutts, 1993. "An introduction to the TAXSIM model," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(1), pages 189-194.
    21. Heaton, John, 1995. "An Empirical Investigation of Asset Pricing with Temporally Dependent Preference Specifications," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(3), pages 681-717, May.
    22. Ferson, Wayne E & Harvey, Campbell R, 1992. "Seasonality and Consumption-Based Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 511-552, June.
    23. Cochrane, John H., 2005. "Financial Markets and the Real Economy," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(1), pages 1-101, July.
    24. Basu, Parantap & Semenov, Andrei & Wada, Kenji, 2011. "Uninsurable risk and financial market puzzles," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1055-1089, October.
    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. Fujii, Yoichiro & Nakamura, Yutaka, 2021. "Regret-sensitive equity premium," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 302-307.

    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. George M. Constantinides, 2002. "Rational Asset Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(4), pages 1567-1591, August.
    2. Ludvigson, Sydney C., 2013. "Advances in Consumption-Based Asset Pricing: Empirical Tests," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 799-906, Elsevier.
    3. Andrei Semenov, 2003. "High-Order Consumption Moments and Asset Pricing," Working Papers 2003_4, York University, Department of Economics, revised Jan 2005.
    4. Kazufumi Yamana, 2016. "Structural Household Finance," Discussion papers ron279, Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan.
    5. Kris Jacobs, 2002. "The Rate of Risk Aversion May Be Lower Than You Think," CIRANO Working Papers 2002s-08, CIRANO.
    6. Alexis Akira Toda & Kieran James Walsh, 2017. "Fat tails and spurious estimation of consumption‐based asset pricing models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(6), pages 1156-1177, September.
    7. George M. Constantinides, 2006. "Market Organization And The Prices Of Financial Assets," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 74(s1), pages 1-23, September.
    8. Jacobs, Kris & Pallage, Stéphane & Robe, Michel A., 2013. "Market incompleteness and the equity premium puzzle: Evidence from state-level data," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 378-388.
    9. Panageas, Stavros, 2020. "The Implications of Heterogeneity and Inequality for Asset Pricing," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 12(3), pages 199-275, November.
    10. Hunter, John & Wu, Feng, 2014. "Multifactor consumption based asset pricing models using the US stock market as a reference: Evidence from a panel of developed economies," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 557-565.
    11. Kris Jacobs, 2001. "Estimating Nonseparable Preference Specifications for Asset Market Participants," CIRANO Working Papers 2001s-12, CIRANO.
    12. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 2003. "The equity premium in retrospect," 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 14, pages 889-938, Elsevier.
    13. Reyno Seymore & Margaret Mabugu & Jan van Heerden, 2010. "Border Tax Adjustments to Negate the Economic Impact of an Electricity Generation Tax," Working Papers 201003, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    14. John Y. Campbell, 2000. "Asset Pricing at the Millennium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1515-1567, August.
    15. Cochrane, John H., 2005. "Financial Markets and the Real Economy," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(1), pages 1-101, July.
    16. Kris Jacobs & Kevin Q. Wang, 2002. "Idiosyncratic Consumption Risk and the Cross-Section of Asset Returns," CIRANO Working Papers 2002s-11, CIRANO.
    17. Andrei Semenov, 2017. "Background risk in consumption and the equity risk premium," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 407-439, February.
    18. Alon Brav & George M. Constantinides & Christopher C. Geczy, 2002. "Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumers and Limited Participation: Empirical Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(4), pages 793-824, August.
    19. Mark C. Freeman, 2004. "Can Market Incompleteness Resolve Asset Pricing Puzzles?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(7‐8), pages 927-949, September.
    20. Fernandez, Pablo & Aguirreamalloa, Javier & Liechtenstein, Heinrich, 2009. "The equity premium puzzle: High required equity premium, undervaluation and self fulfilling prophecy," IESE Research Papers D/821, IESE Business School.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Equity premium puzzle; Stocks; Bonds; Interest rates; Consumer Expenditure Survey;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets

    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:eee:empfin:v:58:y:2020:i:c:p:1-18. 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.