We examine the predictive ability of the aggregate earnings yield for market returns and earnings growth by estimating variance decompositions at multiple horizons. Based on weighted long-horizon regressions, we find that most of the variation in the earnings yield is due to return...

We re-visit a puzzling result that in U.S. post-WW II data the dividend price ratio can predict aggregate returns but not dividend growth. We find that predictive regressions are sensitive to the method used to aggregate firm-level data. Using value weighted firm-level data we find strong...

We compare the stock return forecasting performance of alternative payout yields. The net payout yield produces more accurate forecasts relative to alternatives, including the traditional dividend yield. This remains true even after excluding several years during the Great Depression when...

There is a generalized conviction that variation in dividend yields is exclusively related to expected returns and not to expected dividend growth - e.g. Cochrane's presidential address (Cochrane (2011)). We show that this pattern, although valid for the aggregate stock market, is not true for...

This article documents how the changing composition of U.S. publicly traded firms has prompted a decline in the long-run mean of the aggregate dividend-price ratio, most notably since the 1970s. Adjusting the dividend-price ratio for such changes resolves several issues with respect to the...

Presentation Slides for "Overconfidence, Arbitrage, and Equilibrium Asset Pricing" This paper offers a model in which asset prices reflect both covariance risk and misperceptions of firmsapos prospects, and in which arbitrageurs trade against mispricing. In equilibrium, expected returns are...

I study real effects of uncertainty shocks. Using time-varying volatility of the forecast error, I construct a two-part uncertainty metric that consists of persistent and volatile, burstlike components. These indices are used to study empirically several predictions of uncertainty models: that...

This article documents how the changing composition of U.S. publicly traded firms has prompted a decline in the long-run mean of the aggregate dividend-price ratio, most notably since the 1970s. Adjusting the dividend–price ratio for such changes resolves several issues with respect to the...

We review the literature on return and cash flow growth predictability form the perspective of the present-value identity. We focus predominantly on recent work. Our emphasis is on U.S. aggregate stock return predictability, but we also discuss evidence from other asset classes and countries

Central banks regularly monitor select financial and macroeconomic variables in order to obtain early indication of the impact of monetary policies. This practice is discussed on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York website, for example, where one particular set of macroeconomic "indicators" is...