Equity Premium

Is fear of rare stock market plunges a major factor in the pricing of equities? In the March 2010 version of their paper entitled “Tails, Fears and Risk Premia”, Tim Bollerslev and Viktor Todorov apply highly empirical methods to examine the distribution of large rare events and the effects of these events on the equity risk premium and the volatility risk premium. Specifically, they define and measure an Investors Fears index driven by: (1) slow variation in investment opportunities (for example, due to economic and demographic influences); and, (2) large rare events (for example, due to economic and political crises). Using high-frequency (five-minute) prices for S&P 500 Index futures prices during 1990-2008 and prices for near-to-expiration out-of-the-money S&P 500 Index options during 1996-2008, they conclude that: Keep Reading

What is the current academic estimate of the annual premium over the risk-free rate demanded by equity investors. How has that estimate changed over the past year and since 2000? In his February 2009 paper entitled “Market Risk Premium Used in 2008: A Survey of More Than a 1,000 Professors”, Pablo Fernández summarizes the results of an early 2009 email survey soliciting the risk premium “that we, professors, use to calculate the required return to equity” in 2008 and in previous years. Based on 1,161 responses to the survey from finance and economic professors around the world, he finds that: Keep Reading

What is the latest reading on the future equity risk premium from the academic community? In his January 2008 paper entitled “The Consensus Estimate For The Equity Premium by Academic Financial Economists in December 2007”, Ivo Welch answers this question. Based on 369 “core” responses to a survey of finance professors conducted during late December 2007, he finds that: Keep Reading

Is risk premium variation principally a consequence of changes in objective business conditions, or is some human dynamic important? In their November 2007 paper entitled “Diverse Beliefs and Time Variability of Risk Premia”, Mordecai Kurz and Maurizio Motolese examine the effect of diverse but individually rational market beliefs on risk premiums. They define belief as a variable independent of all observed fundamentals, with its own dynamic that reflects changes in the distribution of investor risk perceptions. Using monthly interest rate forecasts compiled by Blue Chip Financial Forecasts since 1983 to measure market beliefs and associated actual interest rate data, they conclude that: Keep Reading

Is there a way to deal with structural breaks more precisely than just expressing vague skepticism about the usefulness of old data? In the April 2007 draft of their paper entitled “How Useful Are Historical Data for Forecasting the Long-run Equity Return Distribution?”, John Maheu and Thomas McCurdy describe and test a methodology for identifying and calibrating structural breaks in long-term excess equity returns. Using monthly U.S. equity return and risk-free rate data for the period February 1885 through December 2003, they conclude that: Keep Reading

…looks something like this: Keep Reading

What is the latest from academia regarding the prospective equity risk premium? In their November 2006 paper entitled “Estimating the Ex Ante Equity Premium”, Glen Donaldson, Mark Kamstra and Lisa Kramer apply new simulation techniques across ten distinct models to calculate what they claim “is by far the most precise equity premium estimate that has been reported in the literature to date.” Using U.S. dividend growth rates, interest rates, Sharpe ratios, price-dividend ratios, return volatilities and the historical equity premium for 1952-2004 to calibrate their simulations, they conclude that: Keep Reading

What excess return have you gotten, do you expect, should you require, does the market imply for taking the risk of owning stocks? In his September 2006 paper entitled “Equity Premium: Historical, Expected, Required and Implied”, Pablo Fernandez addresses all these questions in a comprehensive overview/history and analysis of the equity risk premium in the U.S. and other countries. He begins with definitions of four perspectives on the equity premium, the first equal for all investors and the other three varying among investors: Keep Reading

In his June 2006 article entitled “Investing in the 21st Century: With Occam’s Razor and Bogle’s Wit”, Javier Estrada evaluates the long-term forecasting abilities of two simple models over 10-year periods during 1973-2005. He then uses them to predict the returns for 12 country stock markets (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK, USA) for 2006-2015. He finds that: Keep Reading

We have selected for retrospective review a few all-time “best selling” research papers of the past few years from the General Financial Markets category of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Here we summarize the March 2002 paper entitled “Stock Market Returns in the Long Run: Participating in the Real Economy” (download count over 3,400) by Roger Ibbotson and Peng Chen. The authors examine the relationships during 1926-2000 between historical equity returns and key supply side factors such as inflation, earnings, dividends, price-to-earnings ratio (P/E), dividend payout ratio, book value, return on equity and GDP per capita. They extrapolate these supply side connections with the real economy to estimate the future long-term equity risk premium. They conclude that: Keep Reading