We argue that the equity premium puzzle may be explained by the fact that most market participants (equity investors, investment banks, analysts, companies¿) do not use standard theory (such as a standard representative consumer asset pricing model) for determining their Required Equity...

Mehra and Prescott (1985) argued that, according to sensible asset pricing models, stocks should provide at most a 0.35% premium over bills. However, companies use higher equity premia (average around 6%) for evaluating their investment projects, professors use in class and in their textbooks...