IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v68y2024ics1544612324010559.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Economic uncertainty and time-varying return predictability

Author

Listed:
  • Liu, Li

Abstract

We propose a predictive regression for stock returns in which the parameter variation is driven by economic uncertainty. A locally weighted least squares approach is developed to obtain parameter estimates which are used to generate forecasts of returns for the S&P 500 index. Our results indicate that the time-varying parameter model accounting for the role of economic uncertainty (TVP-EU) significantly improves upon the standard ordinary least squares model and the historical average benchmark.

Suggested Citation

  • Liu, Li, 2024. "Economic uncertainty and time-varying return predictability," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:68:y:2024:i:c:s1544612324010559
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2024.106025
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612324010559
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2024.106025?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. 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.
    2. X. Frank Zhang, 2006. "Information Uncertainty and Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(1), pages 105-137, February.
    3. Pettenuzzo, Davide & Timmermann, Allan & Valkanov, Rossen, 2014. "Forecasting stock returns under economic constraints," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(3), pages 517-553.
    4. Kyle Jurado & Sydney C. Ludvigson & Serena Ng, 2015. "Measuring Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 1177-1216, March.
    5. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Timmermann, Allan, 2002. "Market timing and return prediction under model instability," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 9(5), pages 495-510, December.
    6. Dangl, Thomas & Halling, Michael, 2012. "Predictive regressions with time-varying coefficients," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 157-181.
    7. Clark, Todd E. & West, Kenneth D., 2007. "Approximately normal tests for equal predictive accuracy in nested models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 291-311, May.
    8. Filardo, Andrew J, 1994. "Business-Cycle Phases and Their Transitional Dynamics," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 12(3), pages 299-308, July.
    9. 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.
    10. Chang-Jin Kim & Charles R. Nelson, 1999. "Has The U.S. Economy Become More Stable? A Bayesian Approach Based On A Markov-Switching Model Of The Business Cycle," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 608-616, November.
    11. David E. Rapach & Jack K. Strauss & Guofu Zhou, 2010. "Out-of-Sample Equity Premium Prediction: Combination Forecasts and Links to the Real Economy," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(2), pages 821-862, February.
    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. Wang, Yudong & Hao, Xianfeng & Wu, Chongfeng, 2021. "Forecasting stock returns: A time-dependent weighted least squares approach," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    2. Nonejad, Nima, 2022. "Predicting equity premium out-of-sample by conditioning on newspaper-based uncertainty measures: A comparative study," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    3. , & Stein, Tobias, 2021. "Equity premium predictability over the business cycle," CEPR Discussion Papers 16357, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Nonejad, Nima, 2020. "Crude oil price volatility and equity return predictability: A comparative out-of-sample study," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    5. Nonejad, Nima, 2022. "Equity premium prediction using the price of crude oil: Uncovering the nonlinear predictive impact," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    6. Nonejad, Nima, 2021. "Predicting equity premium using news-based economic policy uncertainty: Not all uncertainty changes are equally important," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    7. Daniel de Almeida & Ana-Maria Fuertes & Luiz Koodi Hotta, 2025. "Out-of-Sample Predictability of the Equity Risk Premium," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-23, January.
    8. Leland E. Farmer & Lawrence Schmidt & Allan Timmermann, 2023. "Pockets of Predictability," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(3), pages 1279-1341, June.
    9. Zhao, Albert Bo & Cheng, Tingting, 2022. "Stock return prediction: Stacking a variety of models," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 288-317.
    10. 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.
    11. João F. Caldeira & Rangan Gupta & Hudson S. Torrent, 2020. "Forecasting U.S. Aggregate Stock Market Excess Return: Do Functional Data Analysis Add Economic Value?," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(11), pages 1-16, November.
    12. Nima Nonejad, 2021. "Bayesian model averaging and the conditional volatility process: an application to predicting aggregate equity returns by conditioning on economic variables," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(8), pages 1387-1411, August.
    13. Joscha Beckmann & Rainer Schüssler, 2014. "Forecasting Equity Premia using Bayesian Dynamic Model Averaging," CQE Working Papers 2914, Center for Quantitative Economics (CQE), University of Muenster.
    14. Jiang, Fuwei & Kang, Jie & Meng, Lingchao, 2024. "Certainty of uncertainty for asset pricing," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    15. Antonio Gargano & Davide Pettenuzzo & Allan Timmermann, 2019. "Bond Return Predictability: Economic Value and Links to the Macroeconomy," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(2), pages 508-540, February.
    16. Andrew Detzel & Hong Liu & Jack Strauss & Guofu Zhou & Yingzi Zhu, 2021. "Learning and predictability via technical analysis: Evidence from bitcoin and stocks with hard‐to‐value fundamentals," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 50(1), pages 107-137, March.
    17. Feng, Jiabao & Wang, Yudong & Yin, Libo, 2017. "Oil volatility risk and stock market volatility predictability: Evidence from G7 countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 240-254.
    18. Ma, Feng & Wang, Ruoxin & Lu, Xinjie & Wahab, M.I.M., 2021. "A comprehensive look at stock return predictability by oil prices using economic constraint approaches," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    19. Pan, Zhiyuan & Pettenuzzo, Davide & Wang, Yudong, 2020. "Forecasting stock returns: A predictor-constrained approach," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 200-217.
    20. Sander, Magnus, 2018. "Market timing over the business cycle," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 130-145.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic uncertainty; Equity premium; Weighted least squares; Cross-validation; Out-of-sample forecasting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G17 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Financial Forecasting and Simulation

    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:finlet:v:68:y:2024:i:c:s1544612324010559. 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/frl .

    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.