Search Results
Working Paper
Time-varying risk premia and the cross section of stock returns
This paper develops and estimates a heteroskedastic variant of Campbell?s (1993) ICAPM, in which risk factors include a stock market return and variables forecasting stock market returns or variance. Our main innovation is the use of a new set of predictive variables, which not only have superior forecasting abilities for stock returns and variance, but also are theoretically motivated. In contrast with the early authors, we find that Campbell?s ICAPM performs significantly better than the CAPM. That is, the additional factors account for a substantial portion of the two CAPM-related ...
Working Paper
Multivariate contemporaneous threshold autoregressive models
In this paper we propose a contemporaneous threshold multivariate smooth transition autoregressive (C-MSTAR) model in which the regime weights depend on the ex ante probabilities that latent regime-specific variables exceed certain threshold values. The model is a multivariate generalization of the contemporaneous threshold autoregressive model introduced by Dueker et al. (2007). A key feature of the model is that the transition function depends on all the parameters of the model as well as on the data. The stability and distributional properties of the proposed model are investigated. The ...
Working Paper
Market proxies, correlation, and relative mean-variance efficiency: still living with the roll critique
A pricing restriction is developed to test the validity of the CAPM conditional on a prior belief about the correlation between the true market return and the proxy return used in the test. Distinguishing this pricing restriction from competing tests also based upon the relative efficiency of the proxy return is a consideration for the proxy's mismeasurement of the market return. Failure to account for this mismeasurement biases tests of the CAPM towards rejection by overstating the inefficiency of the proxy. A time-varying version of this pricing restriction links mismeasurement of the ...
Working Paper
An empirical investigation of consumption-based asset pricing models with stochastic habit formation
We econometrically estimate a consumption-based asset pricing model with stochastic internal habit and test it using the generalized method of moments. The model departs from existing models with deterministic internal habit (e.g., Dunn and Singleton (1983), Ferson and Constan- tinides (1991), and Heaton (1995)) by introducing shocks to the coefficients in the distributed lag specification of consumption habit and consequently an additional shock to the marginal rate of substitution. The stochastic shocks to the consumption habit are persistent and provide an additional source of time ...
Journal Article
Stock market returns, volatility, and future output
In this article, Hui Guo shows that, if stock volatility follows an AR(1) process, stock market returns relate positively to past volatility but relate negatively to contemporaneous volatility in Merton?s (1973) Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model. The model helps explain the recent finding that stock market volatility drives out returns in forecasting real gross domestic product growth because the predictive power of returns is hampered by their positive correlation with past volatility. If the positive relation between returns and past volatility is controlled for, however, the author ...
Discussion Paper
Alternative measures of the Federal Reserve banks' cost of equity capital
The Monetary Control Act of 1980 requires the Federal Reserve System to provide payment services to depository institutions through the twelve Federal Reserve Banks at prices that fully reflect the costs a private-sector provider would incur, including a cost of equity capital (COE). Although Fama and French (1997) conclude that COE estimates are ?woefully? and ?unavoidably? imprecise, the Reserve Banks require such an estimate every year. We examine several COE estimates based on the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) and compare them using econometric and materiality criteria. Our results ...
Journal Article
The CAPM debate
This article describes the academic debate about the usefulness of the capital asset pricing model (the CAPM) developed by Sharpe and Lintner. First the article describes the data the model is meant to explain?the historical average returns for various types of assets over long time periods. Then the article develops a version of the CAPM and describes how it measures the risk of investing in particular assets. Finally the article describes the results of competing studies of the model's validity. Included are studies that support the CAPM (Black; Black, Jensen, and Scholes; Fama and ...
Working Paper
External habit and the cyclicality of expected stock returns
We estimate an equilibrium asset pricing model in which agents' preferences have an unobserved external habit using the efficient method of moments (EMM). Given the estimated structural parameters we examine the cyclical behavior of expected stock returns in the model. We find that the estimated structural parameters imply countercyclical expected stock returns as documented in existing empirical studies. The model, however, is still rejected at the one percent level. Detailed examination of the moment conditions in our estimation indicates that the model performs reasonably well in matching ...