We show empirically that survey-based measures of expected inflation are significant and strong predictors of future aggregate stock returns in several industrialized countries both in-sample and out-of-sample. By empirically discriminating between competing sources of this return predictability...

This paper presents an empirical evaluation of recently proposed asset pricing models which extend the standard preference specification by a reference level of consumption. We motivate an alternative model that accounts for the return on human capital as a determinant of the reference level....

Recent empirical evidence suggests that the variance risk premium predicts aggregate stock market returns. We demonstrate that statistical finite sample biases cannot “explain” this apparent predictability. Further corroborating the existing evidence of the U.S., we show that country...