Most long-run empirical research on the historical risk premium has focused on the experience of the United States. However, the United States has been a remarkably successful economy, making it unlikely that the US risk premium is representative. Until recently, evidence on the risk premium in...

Investors have too often extrapolated from recent experience. In the 1950s, who but the most rampant optimist would have dreamt that over the next fifty years the real return on equities would be 9% per year? Yet this is what happened in the U.S. stock market. The optimists triumphed. However,...

The size of the equity risk premium-the incremental return that shareholders require to hold risky equities rather than risk-free securities-is a key issue in corporate finance. Financial economists generally measure the equity premium over long periods of time in order to obtain reliable...

(By David Hawdon) This paper brings together contributions originally made to a Surrey Energy Economics Centre seminar on the Nuclear Review. The seminar was held after the conclusion of formal hearings for the Review but before the government announced its proposals for the nuclear industry on...