Vector-autoregressive models are used to decompose housing returns in 18 OECD countries into cash ?ow (rent) news and discount rate (return) news. Only for two countries - Germany and Ireland - do changing expectations of future rents play a dominating role in explaining housing return...

We investigate the predictive power of the rent-to-price ratio for future real estate returns and rent growth in 18 OECD countries over the period 1970 to 2011. First, we document that in most countries returns are signi?cantly predictable by the rent-price ratio. An increase (decrease) in the...

Unpredictable dividend growth by the dividend-price ratio is considered a 'stylized fact' in post war US data. Using long-term data, covering more than 80 years from the US and three European countries, we revisit this stylized fact, and we also report results on return predictability. We find...

We extend the VAR based intertemporal asset allocation approach from Campbell et al. (2003) to the case where the VAR parameter estimates are adjusted for small-sample bias. We apply the analytical bias formula from Pope (1990) using both Campbell et al.'s dataset, and an extended dataset with...

Based on Chen and Zhao's (2009) criticism of VAR based return decompositions, we explain in detail the various limitations and pitfalls involved in such decompositions. First, we show that Chen and Zhao's interpretation of their excess bond return decomposition is wrong: the residual component...

We analyze and compare the properties of various methods for bias-correcting parameter estimates in vector autoregressions. First, we show that two analytical bias formulas from the existing literature are in fact identical. Next, based on a detailed simulation study, we show that this simple...