IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/1999-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Stock prices, expected returns, and inflation

Author

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of expected inflation on stock prices and expected long-run returns. An ex ante estimates measure of expected long-run returns is derived by incorporating estimates of expected of future corporate cash flows into a variant of the Campbell-Shiller dividend-price ratio model. In this model, the log earnings-price ratio is expressed as a linear function of expected future returns, expected earnings growth rates, and the log of the current dividend-payout ratio. Expectations of earnings growth are inferred from equity analysts' earnings forecasts, while inflation expectations are drawn from surveys of professional forecasters. I find that the negative relation between equity valuations and expected inflation results from two effects: higher expected inflation coincides with (I) lower expected real earnings growth and (ii) higher required real returns. The earnings channel is not merely a reflection of inflation's recession-signalling properties; rather, much of the negative valuation effect results from a negative relation between expected inflation and expected longer-term real earnings growth. The effect of expected inflation on required (long-run) real stock returns is also substantial. A one percentage point increase in expected inflation raises required real stock returns about one percentage point, which on average implies a 20 percent decline in the level of stock prices. The inflation-related component of expected real stock returns is closely related to the component explained by real long-term bond yields.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven A. Sharpe, 1999. "Stock prices, expected returns, and inflation," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1999-02, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:1999-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/1999/199902/199902abs.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/1999/199902/199902pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. von Furstenberg, George M & Malkiel, Burton G, 1977. "Financial Analysis in an Inflationary Environment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 575-588, May.
    2. Shiller, Robert J. & Beltratti, Andrea E., 1992. "Stock prices and bond yields : Can their comovements be explained in terms of present value models?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 25-46, October.
    3. John Y. Campbell & Robert J. Shiller, 1988. "Stock Prices, Earnings and Expected Dividends," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 858, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    4. Martin Feldstein, 1983. "Inflation and the Stock Market," NBER Chapters, in: Inflation, Tax Rules, and Capital Formation, pages 186-198, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Campbell, John Y., 1999. "Asset prices, consumption, and the business cycle," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 19, pages 1231-1303, Elsevier.
    6. Fama, Eugene F, 1981. "Stock Returns, Real Activity, Inflation, and Money," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(4), pages 545-565, September.
    7. 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.
    8. repec:bla:jfinan:v:43:y:1988:i:4:p:965-81 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Lawrence H. Summers, 1982. "The Nonadjustment of Nominal Interest Rates: A Study of the Fisher Effect," NBER Working Papers 0836, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Douglas K. Pearce & V. Vance Roley, 1987. "Firm Characteristics, Unanticipated Inflation, and Stock Returns," NBER Working Papers 2366, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. repec:bla:jfinan:v:43:y:1988:i:3:p:661-76 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Martin Feldstein & Lawrence Summers, 1983. "Inflation and the Taxation of Capital Income in the Corporate Sector," NBER Chapters, in: Inflation, Tax Rules, and Capital Formation, pages 116-152, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. 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.
    14. Thorbecke, Willem, 1997. "On Stock Market Returns and Monetary Policy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 635-654, June.
    15. Lawrence H. Summers, 1981. "Inflation and the Valuation of Corporate Equities," NBER Working Papers 0824, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Campbell, John Y & Ammer, John, 1993. "What Moves the Stock and Bond Markets? A Variance Decomposition for Long-Term Asset Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 3-37, March.
    17. Brown, Lawrence D., 1993. "Earnings forecasting research: its implications for capital markets research," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 295-320, November.
    18. Kaul, Gautam, 1987. "Stock returns and inflation : The role of the monetary sector," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 253-276, June.
    19. Martin Feldstein, 1983. "Inflation, Tax Rules, and the Stock Market," NBER Chapters, in: Inflation, Tax Rules, and Capital Formation, pages 199-220, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Jensen, Gerald R. & Mercer, Jeffrey M. & Johnson, Robert R., 1996. "Business conditions, monetary policy, and expected security returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 213-237, February.
    21. Boudoukh, Jacob & Richardson, Matthew & Whitelaw, Robert F, 1994. "Industry Returns and the Fisher Effect," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(5), pages 1595-1615, December.
    22. Fama, Eugene F. & Schwert, G. William, 1977. "Asset returns and inflation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 115-146, November.
    23. Bodie, Zvi, 1976. "Common Stocks as a Hedge against Inflation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(2), pages 459-470, May.
    24. Geske, Robert & Roll, Richard, 1983. "The Fiscal and Monetary Linkage between Stock Returns and Inflation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 38(1), pages 1-33, March.
    25. Bernard, Victor L., 1986. "Unanticipated inflation and the value of the firm," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 285-321, March.
    26. Stulz, Rene M, 1986. "Asset Pricing and Expected Inflation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(1), pages 209-223, March.
    27. 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.
    28. William R. Nelson, 1999. "The aggregate change in shares and the level of stock prices," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 1999-08, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    29. John B. Shoven & Jeremy I. Bulow, 1976. "Inflation Accounting and Nonfinancial Corporate Profits: Financial Assets and Liabilities," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 7(1), pages 15-66.
    30. Martha S. Scanlon, 1981. "Postwar trends in corporate rates of return," Monograph, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), number 1981pticro.
    31. Boudoukh, Jacob & Richardson, Matthew, 1993. "Stock Returns and Inflation: A Long-Horizon Perspective," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1346-1355, December.
    32. Chen, Nai-Fu, 1991. "Financial Investment Opportunities and the Macroeconomy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(2), pages 529-554, June.
    33. Dechow, Patricia M. & Sloan, Richard G., 1997. "Returns to contrarian investment strategies: Tests of naive expectations hypotheses," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 3-27, January.
    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. John Y. Campbell, 2000. "Asset Pricing at the Millennium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1515-1567, August.
    2. Quentin Wibaut, 2000. "Politique monétaire et prix des actifs: le cas des Etats-Unis," Working Paper Document 11, National Bank of Belgium.
    3. Nathan S. Balke & Mark E. Wohar, 2001. "Explaining stock price movements: is there a case for fundamentals?," Economic and Financial Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Q III, pages 22-34.
    4. Nathan S. Balke & Mark E. Wohar, 2002. "Low-Frequency Movements in Stock Prices: A State-Space Decomposition," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(4), pages 649-667, November.
    5. David Dupuis & David Tessier, 2004. "The U.S. Stock Market and Fundamentals: A Historical Decomposition," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2004 73, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    6. Piotr Fiszeder & Sebastian Rowinski, 2012. "Modeling relations between selected macroeconomic processes and the Warsaw Stock Exchange index," Ekonomia i Prawo, Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika, vol. 10(3), pages 153-167, September.
    7. Liliam Sanchez Carrete & Vitor Corona & Rosana Tavares, 2016. "Impact of Number of Security Analysts in Liquidity of Brazilian Stocks," International Business Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 9(11), pages 105-115, November.
    8. Ralph Chami & Thomas F. Cosimano & Connel Fullenkamp, 2001. "Capital Trading, Stock Trading, and the Inflation Tax on Equity," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 4(3), pages 575-606, July.
    9. David Dupuis & David Tessier, 2003. "The U.S. Stock Market and Fundamentals: A Historical Decomposition," Staff Working Papers 03-20, Bank of Canada.
    10. Lynn E. Browne, 1999. "U.S economic performance: good fortune, bubble, or new era?," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue May, pages 3-20.
    11. repec:cpn:umkeip:2012:v3:p:153-167 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Christophe, Faugere, 2003. "A Required Yield Theory of Stock Market Valuation and Treasury Yield Determination," MPRA Paper 15579, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 04 Jun 2009.
    13. Deimante Teresiene, 2009. "Lithuanian stock market analysis using a set of Garch models," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(4), pages 349-360, August.
    14. Christophe Faugere & Julian Van Erlach, 2003. "A General Theory of Stock Market Valuation and Return," Finance 0311005, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 17 May 2004.
    15. Pierre Villa, 2002. "Liquidité et passage de la valeur," Working Papers 2002-10, CEPII research center.
    16. John B. Carlson & Eduard A. Pelz & Mark E. Wohar, 2001. "Will the valuation ratios revert to their historical means? Some evidence from breakpoint tests," Working Papers (Old Series) 0113, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

    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. Sellin, Peter, 1998. "Monetary Policy and the Stock Market: Theory and Empirical Evidence," Working Paper Series 72, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    2. Peter Sellin, 2001. "Monetary Policy and the Stock Market: Theory and Empirical Evidence," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(4), pages 491-541, September.
    3. Heimonen, Kari, 2010. "Money and equity returns in the Euro area," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 152-169.
    4. Harjoat S. Bhamra & Christian Dorion & Alexandre Jeanneret & Michael Weber, 2018. "Low Inflation: High Default Risk AND High Equity Valuations," NBER Working Papers 25317, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Lee, Bong Soo, 2010. "Stock returns and inflation revisited: An evaluation of the inflation illusion hypothesis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 1257-1273, June.
    6. Doron Nissim & Stephen H. Penman, 2003. "The Association between Changes in Interest Rates, Earnings, and Equity Values," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 20(4), pages 775-804, December.
    7. Kim, Dongcheol & Roh, Tai-Yong & Min, Byoung-Kyu & Byun, Suk-Joon, 2014. "Time-varying expected momentum profits," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 191-215.
    8. Bampinas, Georgios & Panagiotidis, Theodore, 2016. "Hedging inflation with individual US stocks: A long-run portfolio analysis," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 374-392.
    9. Gwangheon Hong & Bong Lee, 2013. "Does Inflation Illusion Explain the Relation between REITs and Inflation?," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 47(1), pages 123-151, July.
    10. Qureshi, Fiza & Khan, Habib Hussain & Rehman, Ijaz Ur & Ghafoor, Abdul & Qureshi, Saba, 2019. "Mutual fund flows and investors’ expectations in BRICS economies: Implications for international diversification," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 130-150.
    11. John Ammer, 1994. "Inflation, inflation risk, and stock returns," International Finance Discussion Papers 464, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    12. Kothari, S. P., 2001. "Capital markets research in accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-3), pages 105-231, September.
    13. Paul Alagidede & Theodore Panagiotidis, 2010. "Can common stocks provide a hedge against inflation? Evidence from African countries," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(3), pages 91-100, August.
    14. Aliyu, Shehu Usman Rano, 2020. "What have we learnt from modelling stock returns in Nigeria: Higgledy-piggledy?," MPRA Paper 110382, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 Jun 2021.
    15. Claudiu Tiberiu Albulescu & Christian Aubin & Daniel Goyeau, 2017. "Stock prices, inflation and inflation uncertainty in the U.S.: testing the long-run relationship considering Dow Jones sector indexes," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(18), pages 1794-1807, April.
    16. Tiwari Aviral Kumar & Cunado Juncal & Gupta Rangan & Wohar Mark E., 2019. "Are stock returns an inflation hedge for the UK? Evidence from a wavelet analysis using over three centuries of data," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 23(3), pages 1-17, June.
    17. Spierdijk, Laura & Umar, Zaghum, 2015. "Stocks, bonds, T-bills and inflation hedging: From great moderation to great recession," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-37.
    18. Somayeh Madadpour & Mohsen Asgari, 2019. "The puzzling relationship between stocks return and inflation: a review article," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 66(2), pages 115-145, June.
    19. Omran, Mohammed & Pointon, John, 2001. "Does the inflation rate affect the performance of the stock market? The case of Egypt," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 263-279, September.
    20. Jaewon Choi & Matthew P. Richardson & Robert F. Whitelaw, 2014. "On the Fundamental Relation Between Equity Returns and Interest Rates," NBER Working Papers 20187, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Stock - Prices; Inflation (Finance);

    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:fip:fedgfe:1999-02. 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: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.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.