In this paper we study a simple two-period asset pricing model to understand the implications of uninsurable labor income risk and/or borrowing constraints, limited stock market participation, heterogeneous labor income volatilities, and heterogeneous preferences. We appraise the performance of...

Studies of human memory indicate that features of an event evoke memories of prior associated contextual states, which in turn become associated with the current event's features. This mechanism allows the remote past to influence the present, even as agents gradually update their beliefs about...

Previous writers have attempted to resolve the equity premium puzzle by employing a utility function that depends on current consumption minus (or relative to) past habit consumption. This paper points out that an individual's current utility may also depend upon how well off in the recent past...

Contrary to well-known asset pricing models, volatilities implied by equity index options exceed realized stock market volatility and exhibit a pattern known as the volatility skew. We explain both facts using a model that can also account for the mean and volatility of equity returns. Our model...

We analyze the history of the equity risk premium from surveys of U.S. Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) conducted every quarter from June 2000 to March 2014. The risk premium is the expected 10-year S&P 500 return relative to a 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield. While the risk premium sharply...

We derive the equilibrium interest rate and risk premiums using recursive utility for jump-diffusions. Compared to to the continuous version, including jumps allows for a separate risk aversion related to jump size risk in addition to risk aversion related to the continuous part. We also...

We analyze the history of the equity risk premium from surveys of U.S. Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) conducted every quarter from June 2000 to March 2015. The risk premium is the expected 10-year S&P 500 return relative to a 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield. We show that the equity risk...

We study a rational expectations' competitive equilibrium in a production economy, i.e., a system of prices at which firms' profit maximizing production decisions and individuals' preferred affordable consumption choices equate supply and demand in every market. We derive the equilibrium price...

We study the Epstein-Zin model with recursive utility. Recognizing that recursive preferences implies that the underlying model is not Markovian, we use methods not depending upon the Markov property to solve the model. We work with the returns directly, which we approximate by Taylor series...

We analyze the history of the equity risk premium from surveys of U.S. Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) conducted every quarter from June 2000 to June 2016. The risk premium is the expected 10-year S&P 500 return relative to a 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield. The average risk premium in 2016,...