Consumption-based Asset Pricing Research Articles

'Big Bang' in Micro Consumption and Its Implications for Asset Pricing

We establish some facts about micro consumption that open an avenue toward fully solving various consumption-based asset pricing puzzles. We find that top quantiles of consumption growth of the majority people are positively correlated with asset returns; at low quantiles the correlations for many people are negative. This partial negative correlation accounts for the low time-series correlation between asset returns and the growth rates of aggregated consumption, which is at the heart of many pricing anomalies. Our findings suggest that a large proportion of individuals’ preference toward consumption is risk-seeking at low consumption-growth states, while most individuals are risk-averse at high consumption-growth states. Both risk-seeking and risk-averse individuals demand a positive equity premium at their respective states. The equity premium puzzle arises from modeling risk-seeking behaviors as risk aversion, which partially generates a negative equity premium.

Digital economy era: the role of the telecommunications sector in frequency-dependent default risk connectedness

We use frequency-dependent connectedness measures to study the role played by the telecommunications (telecoms) sector in sectoral default risk connectedness at three frequency bands, i.e. the short-, medium-, and long-term financial cycles. We extend credit risk spillovers analysis from the time domain to the frequency domain. Our findings indicate that investors in the global CDS sector index market have different investment horizons, but they prefer to process default risk information mainly within one week. In the within-region analysis, except for North America, the telecoms sector plays a significant role in transmitting net credit risk to the other sectors, especially in the short-term financial cycle. In the cross-region analysis, the European telecoms sector is the major net default risk transmitter on all three frequency bands. Our study has noteworthy empirical implications for consumption-based asset pricing models, cross-sector credit risk connectivity, and regional financial stability.

A consumption-based asset pricing model with disappointment aversion and uncertainty shocks

We study a consumption-based asset pricing model with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ uncertainties. Good and bad uncertainties are characterized by two gamma distributions with time-varying shape parameters and they respectively represent potentially fat-tailed, skewed positive and negative innovations to consumption growth. The representative agent has generalized disappointment aversion preferences. We show that disappointment aversion is important for generating a low risk-free rate and high equity premium, and additionally, while the influence of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution (EIS) on equity premium is negligible, the EIS is important for delivering reasonable implications on the market prices of the two uncertainty components.

Maximum Entropy Analysis of Consumption-based Capital Asset Pricing Model and Volatility

Abstract Based on the maximum entropy (ME) method, we introduce an information theoretic approach to estimating conditional moment functions with incorporating a theoretical constraint implied from the consumption-based capital asset pricing model (CCAPM). Using the ME conditional mean/variance functions obtained from the ME density, we analyze the relationship between asset returns and consumption growth under the theoretical constraint of the CCAPM. We evaluate the predictability of asset return using consumption growth through in-sample estimation and out-of-sample prediction in the ME mean regression function. We also examine the ME variance regression function for the asset return volatility as a function of the consumption growth. Our findings suggest that incorporating the CCAPM constraint can capture the nonlinear predictability of asset returns in mean especially in tails, and that the consumption growth has an effect on reducing stock return volatility, indicating the counter-cyclical variation of stock market volatility.

The Pre-FOMC Announcement Drift and Private Information: Kyle Meets Macro-Finance

This paper proposes and tests the private information explanation for the time series of pre-FOMC announcement drift through risk reduction. Using transaction-level data, I document the informed trading is in the same direction of the realized returns in the 24-hour window before FOMC announcements, coinciding with the pre-FOMC uncertainty reduction. I integrate Kyle's (1985) model into a standard consumption-based asset pricing framework where the market makers are compensated for the risk of assets' fundamentals. Observing aggregate order flow, they update the belief about the marginal utility-weighted asset value, which resolves uncertainty gradually and results in an upward drift in market prices before announcements. I demonstrate that there is a strictly positive pre-FOMC drift if and only if the market makers require risk compensation.

What Determines China’s Stock Prices? A CCAPM Horse Race

This paper studies China’s stock prices in the framework of consumption-based capital asset pricing models (CCAPM). Using China’s quarterly stock market data from 1991 to 2019, we estimate and compare four versions of CCAPM: the classical CCAPM, CCAPM with housing service consumption, with habit formation, and with both. We find habit formation affects stock returns only if housing service consumption is considered. Further, although every model is consistent with data to certain extent, the models with habit formation perform substantially better. In particular, the model with both habit formation and housing service consumption fits the data best and has the largest explanatory power on risk premium. The findings imply that habit formation is an important determinant of China’s stock prices, and its impact is mostly via the channel of housing service consumption.

The housing risk premium in a production economy

ABSTRACT This article studies how the housing risk premium is determined in a simple real business cycle model. We present a consumption-based asset pricing model for the housing risk premium and evaluate whether the model is able to explain the observed housing risk premium. Our findings show that a real business cycle model with generalized recursive preferences is able to match the observed housing risk premium. We also find that the volatility of the housing demand shock plays a crucial role in determining the risk–return relationship for housing.

US stock prices and recency-biased learning in the run-up to the Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath

This paper presents a consumption-based asset pricing model in which fluctuations in stock prices are driven by investors’ time-varying subjective expectations about the dividend process. In line with the empirical literature, investors display recency bias when revising their beliefs about the actual dividend process and recursively discount the precision of past observations. Recency-biased learning significantly improves the ability of the standard model to replicate the boom-and-bust episode on the US S&P 500 stock market in the run-up to the Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath, along with features of subjective expectations of stock returns documented in survey data.

Probability weighting and default risk: a possible explanation for distressed stock puzzles

This paper suggests incorporating investor probability weighting and the default risk of individual firms into a consumption-based asset pricing model. The extended model provides a unified explanation for several anomalous patterns observed in financial markets. The analysis addresses not only widely recognized asset pricing puzzles, such as the equity premium puzzle, but also less-studied anomalies on financially distressed stocks. The simulation, under which the model is calibrated according to U.S. historical data, shows that a combination of mild overweighting of probability on tail events and nonlinearity of equity values caused by default risk has the potential to resolve these patterns.

Evaluating Private Equity Performance Using Stochastic Discount Factors

We examine the performance of 2,790 private equity (PE) funds incepted during 1979-2008 using Stochastic Discount Factors (SDFs) implied by the two leading consumption-based asset pricing models (CBAPMs) — external habit and long-run risks — as their assumptions appear consistent with investment objectives of avid PE investors. In contrast to CAPM-based inference, venture funds did not destroy value under these CBAPMs in post-2000 vintages and may even have outperformed buyouts and generalists in the full sample. We find that 2007-08 venture vintages provide a better hedge for post-crises consumption shocks than other types of PE, and that the temporal variation in PE excess returns is significantly smaller under CBAPMs. Our contribution is also methodological. We extend the realized risk premia matching insight of Korteweg and Nagel (2016) to a more general class of SDFs, namely portfolio-specific discount factors that reflect non-tradeable assets unspanned by standard benchmarks. To this end, we propose a more efficient estimation of SDF parameters in this context and develop a finite sample bias correction for NPV-based inference with long-duration assets.

On Robust Inference for Consumption-based Asset Pricing

Kleibergen and Zhan (Robust Inference for Consumption-based Asset Pricing, Journal of Finance, 2020) propose a new approach to testing consumption-based asset pricing models that is robust to useless factors, i.e. factors uncorrelated with the test assets. They find that recently proposed factors do not pass their test. I provide extensive simulation experiments of empirically relevant cases, which show that their method has almost no power to detect useful factors with a significant return correlation of 0.45+. In contrast, the traditional Fama-MacBeth method comes with good size and considerably higher power in small samples. Bootstrap methods can be utilized to evaluate accuracy in larger samples. I argue that the problem of useless factors is hugely exaggerated to motivate a new “robust” methodology that is actually not more “robust” than traditional methods but comes at the cost of lacking power to detect useful factors in empirically relevant cases.

Semiparametric Estimation of Latent Variable Asset Pricing Models

This paper studies semiparametric identification and estimation of the stochastic discount factor in consumption-based asset pricing models with latent state variables. We model consumption, dividends, and a multiplicative discount factor component via unknown functions of Markovian states describing aggregate output growth. For the case of affine state dynamics and polynomial approximation of the measurement and pricing equations, we provide rank conditions for identification and tractable algorithms for filtering, smoothing, and likelihood estimation. Empirically, we find sizable nonlinearities and interactions in the impacts of expected growth and volatility on the price-dividend ratio and the discount factor.

Asset pricing in an Islamic economy

ABSTRACT We define an Islamic economy as one with borrowing restrictions, no leverage, and no risk-free asset. We derive a consumption-based asset pricing model for this economy under standard preferences. We demonstrate that news to consumption growth is the main driver of Islamic financial markets, but the degree of borrowing constraints also affects the pricing of Islamic assets. Using Saudi Arabian data, simulations show that our model does a good job in matching the observed equity premium as well as the volatility of the market return. Our model implies that the price-dividend ratio predicts dividend growth, and as a result that prices are driven mainly by cash-flow news rather than by discount rate news. Empirical tests show that our model is consistent with the data.

Option-Implied Price of Risk

I use index prices and options to estimate the pricing kernel's elasticity, which equals the market price of risk. I show that my estimate predicts future market returns, is priced in a cross-sectional analysis, and that it is highly correlated to business cycle variables. Building on the external habits model of Campbell and Cochrane (1999), I rationalize my results by assuming a time-varying relationship between consumption growth and market returns, and therefore introduce a new way of estimating the latent surplus consumption ratio without using problematic consumption data. My results provide novel empirical support for consumption-based asset pricing models.

A Unified Theory of the Term Structure and the Beta Anomaly

Rational expectation models generally suggest that assets with more exposure to systematic risks should carry higher risk premia. However, several empirical findings challenge this result. I propose a novel generalized recursive smooth aversion model that allows agents to show different levels of aversion to short-run consumption risk and long-run shocks. I apply this model to a consumption-based asset pricing model in which the representative agent’s consumption process is subject to rare but large disasters. The calibrated model matches major asset pricing moments, while riskier assets could carry lower risk premia.

State-Control Asset Pricing

The equity premium-risk-free rate level and predictability puzzles in standard power utility consumption-based asset pricing models disappear once we remove the government-imposed component from the consumption expenditure series. I calibrate this component based on the growth rates of two proxies for government intervention, which I also show to forecast the short- and long-term equity premiums between 1974 (or 1981) and 2017. In summary, investors require large premiums to hold stocks because stocks deliver poor returns when government intervention (failure) increases, systematically reducing individual utility levels. Government failure is likely the key macro-finance variable linking asset prices and economic fluctuations.

Time-varying inflation risk and stock returns

We show that inflation risk is priced in stock returns and that inflation risk premia in the cross-section and the aggregate market vary over time, even changing sign as in the early 2000s. This time variation is due to both price and quantities of inflation risk changing over time. Using a consumption-based asset pricing model, we argue that inflation risk is priced because inflation predicts real consumption growth. The historical changes in this predictability and in stocks’ inflation betas can account for the size, variability, predictability, and sign reversals in inflation risk premia.

Macroeconomic Tail Risks and Asset Prices

AbstractI document that dividend growth and returns on the aggregate U.S. stock market are more correlated with consumption growth in bad economic times. In a consumption-based asset pricing model with a generalized disappointment-averse investor and small, IID consumption shocks, this feature results in a realistic equity premium despite low risk aversion. The model is consistent with the main facts about stock market risk premiums inferred from equity index options, remains tightly parameterized, and allows for analytical solutions for asset prices. An extension with non-IID dynamics accounts for excess volatility and return predictability, while preserving the model’s consistency with option moments.Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

CONSUMER DEMAND, CONSUMPTION, AND ASSET PRICING: AN INTEGRATED ANALYSIS WITH INTERTEMPORAL TWO-STAGE BUDGETING

This paper integrates seemingly disjoint studies on consumer behavior in micro and macroanalyses via an intertemporal two-stage budgeting procedure with durable goods and liquidity constraints. The model specifies an indirect utility function as a function of nondurable consumption, commodity (nondurables) prices, and durables stock, and derives the demand functions for nondurable goods. A demand function for durable goods is derived in an adjustment cost framework. The consumption growth equation accounts for relative price effects with precautionary saving, durables stock, and liquidity constraints. The stochastic discount factor is approximated by a time-varying linear function of nondurable consumption growth, commodity price growth, durables stock growth, and disposable income growth. The demand functions for six nondurable goods and services are jointly estimated with the Euler equations for bonds, stocks, and durable goods with allowance for liquidity constraints, using US data. Estimation provides new findings for intertemporal consumption and a multifactor consumption-based capital asset pricing model.

Asset Pricing With and Without Garbage: Resurrecting Aggregate Consumption

This paper challenges the view that alternative consumption measures (e.g., garbage, fourth quarter, unfiltered consumption) can address the empirical shortcomings of consumption-based asset pricing. Instead, we show that testing alternative consumption processes is a triple hypothesis problem, which, in addition to finding the most accurate consumption measure, requires specifying and estimating the dynamics of consumption growth and testing the functional form of investor preferences. The existing literature tends to make strong assumptions on consumption dynamics (i.i.d.) and investor preferences (CRRA). We show that relaxing these assumptions leads to different results regarding the fit and preference parameters of the various consumption measures.