This paper evaluates the return on equity using novel data on the consumption of luxury goods. Specifying household utility as a nonhomothetic function of the consumption of both a luxury good and a basic good, we derive and evaluate the riskiness of equity in such a world. Household survey and...

We explore the macro/finance interface in the context of equity markets. In particular, using half a century of Livingston expected business conditions data we characterize directly the impact of expected business conditions on expected excess stock returns. Expected business conditions...

This paper provides a global asset pricing perspective on the debate over the relation between predetermined attributes of common stocks, such as ratios of price-to-book-value, cash-flow, earnings, and other variables to the future returns. Some argue that such variables may be used to find...

This paper proposes and implements a new approach to a classic unsolved problem in financial economics: the optimal consumption and portfolio choice problem of a long-lived investor facing time-varying investment opportunities. The investor is assumed to be infinitely-lived, to have recursive...

We review a recent approach to understanding the equity premium puzzle. The key elements of this approach are loss aversion and narrow framing, two well-known features of decision-making under risk in experimental settings. In equilibrium, models that incorporate these ideas can generate a large...

We study the interactions between the stock market and the labor market. When aggregate risk premiums are time-varying, predictive variables for market excess returns should forecast long-horizon growth in the marginal benefit of hiring and thereby long-horizon aggregate employment growth....

A habit persistence, general equilibrium model with multiple assets matches both the time series properties of the market portfolio and the cross-sectional predictability of returns on price sorted portfolios, the value premium. Consistent with empirical evidence, the model shows that (a) value...

A number of variables are correlated with subsequent returns on the aggregate US stock market in the 20th Century. Some of these variables are stock market valuation ratios, others reflect patterns in corporate finance or the levels of short- and long-term interest rates. Amit Goyal and Ivo...

Aggregate stock prices, relative to virtually any indicator of fundamental value, soared to unprecedented levels in the 1990s. Even today, after the market declines since 2000, they remain well above historical norms. Why? We consider one particular explanation: a fall in macroeconomic risk, or...

We empirically decompose the S&P 500's dividend yield into (1) a rational forecast of long-run real dividend growth, (2) the subjectively expected risk premium, and (3) residual mispricing attributed to the market's forecast of dividend growth deviating from the rational forecast. Modigliani and...