This paper investigates the role of consumer heterogeneity in explaining asset returns. Using a Taylor series expansion of the individual's marginal utility of consumption around the conditional expectation of consumption, we derive an approximate equilibrium model for expected returns. In this...

This paper develops an approximate equilibrium factor model for asset returns. In this model, the pricing factors are the cross-moments of return with the cross-sectional moments of individual consumption and the signs of the risk factor coefficients are driven by preference assumptions. Using...

I generalize the long-run risks (LRR) model of Bansal and Yaron (2004) by incorporating recursive smooth ambiguity aversion preferences from Klibanoff et al. (2005, 2009) and time-varying ambiguity. Relative to the Bansal-Yaron model, the generalized LRR model is as tractable but more flexible...

This chapter reviews the behavior of financial asset prices in relation to consumption. The chapter lists some important stylized facts that characterize U.S. data, and relates them to recent developments in equilibrium asset pricing theory. Data from other countries are examined to see which...

This paper shows the success of valuation risk-time‐preference shocks in Epstein-Zin utility-in resolving asset pricing puzzles rests sensitively on the way it is introduced. The specification used in the literature is at odds with several desirable properties of recursive preferences because...

We examine asset prices in a representative-agent model of general equilibrium. Assuming only that individuals are risk averse, we determine conditions on the changes in asset risk that are both necessary and sufficient for the asset price to fall. We show that these conditions neither imply,...

This paper considers a model of reference-dependent utility in which the individual makes a conscious choice of her reference point for future consumption. The model incorporates the combination of loss aversion and anticipatory utility as competing forces in the determination of the optimal...

This paper assesses the quantitative impact of ambiguity on historically observed financial asset returns and growth rates. The single agent, in a dynamic exchange economy, treats the conditional uncertainty about the consumption and dividends next period as ambiguous. We calibrate the agent's...

The rare disaster hypothesis suggests that the extraordinarily high postwar U.S. equity premium resulted because investors ex ante demanded compensations for unlikely but calamitous risks that they happened not to incur. While convincing in theory, empirical tests of the rare disaster...