Asset prices and the equity premium might reflect doubts and pessimism. Introducing these features in an otherwise standard New-Keynesian model changes optimal policy in a substantial way. There are three main results: (i) asset-price movements improve the inflation-output trade-off so that...

We investigate monthly returns of Belgian stocks listed on the Brussels stock exchange in the period 1838–2010. Our dataset is based on official quotation lists of the stock exchange, and it takes into account all common stocks that were ever listed on the stock exchange during the period...

The Bansal and Yaron (2004) model of long run risks (LLR) in aggregate consumption and dividend growth and its extension that captures potential co- integration of the consumption and dividend levels, are tested on a cross-section of asset classes and rejected using annual data over the period...

This paper contains the statistics on the equity premium, or market risk premium (MRP), used in 2012 for 82 countries. We got answers for 93 countries, but we only report the results for 82 countries with more than five answers. <p>Most previous surveys have been interested in the expected MRP, but...</p>

Some important puzzles in macro finance can be resolved in a model featuring systematically varying volatility of unpriced shocks to firms׳ earnings. In the data, the correlation between corporate debt and stock market valuations is low. The model accounts for this via the opposing effect of...

We study asset-pricing implications of innovation in a general-equilibrium overlapping-generations economy. Innovation increases the competitive pressure on existing firms and workers, reducing the profits of existing firms and eroding the human capital of older workers. Due to the lack of...

We investigate whether the set of Kreps and Porteus (1978) preferences include classes of preferences that are stationary, monotonic and well-ordered in terms of risk aversion. We prove that the class of preferences introduced by Hansen and Sargent (1995) in their robustness analysis is the only...

There is recent and strong evidence that nominal stock returns are independent of inflation. In what amounts to the same thing, when real stock returns are regressed on inflation the resulting estimated coefficient on inflation is negative and unitary. These two propositions are mathematically...

This paper introduces state dependent utility into the standard Mehra and Prescott (1985) economy by allowing the representative agent's coefficient of relative risk aversion to vary with the underlying economy's growth rate. Existence of equilibrium is proved and its asymptotic properties...