Equilibrium Asset Pricing Model Research Articles

Overextrapolation of disaster probabilities and asset pricing in a production economy

In this paper, the overextrapolation belief about the jump intensity of disaster risk is incorporated into an equilibrium asset pricing model in a production economy. The theoretical results, which are dependent on the level of the jump intensity, show that overextrapolation may induce over/underinvestment and under/overconsumption. Moreover, it is predicted that the overextrapolative agent will always overreact on investment and consumption, which results in higher volatility in the economy and generates a higher equity risk premium under the equilibrium model. However, the effects of overextrapolation on the interest rate are ambiguous. Finally, we find that the overextrapolative agent suffers significant welfare loss due to the distortion of investment and consumption, especially when the jump intensity is far from the long-run mean.

Asset holders’ consumption risk and tests of conditional CCAPM

We test the conditional consumption-CAPM using asset holders’ consumption and find that the time variation in the prices of asset holders’ consumption risk is procyclical. This puzzling time variation is at odds with the implication of existing consumption-based equilibrium asset pricing models. We show that our finding is a salient feature of the data observed in multiple asset classes (aggregate equity market, equity portfolios, bond portfolios, and commodities portfolios), using different measures of consumption (household survey data and high-frequency retail shopping data) and alternative empirical methodologies.

Understanding the Ownership Structure of Corporate Bonds

Insurers are the largest institutional investors of corporate bonds. However, a standard theory of insurance markets, in which insurers maximize firm value subject to regulatory or risk constraints, predicts no allocation to corporate bonds. We resolve this puzzle in an equilibrium asset pricing model with leverage-constrained households and institutional investors. Insurers have relatively cheap access to leverage through their underwriting activity. They hold a leveraged portfolio of low-beta assets in equilibrium, relaxing other investors’ leverage constraints. The model explains recent empirical findings on insurers’ portfolio choice and its impact on asset prices. (JEL G11, G12, G22, G23)

Social interaction, volatility clustering, and momentum

This paper incorporates information uncertainty and social interaction among investors into a random utility framework and develops a dynamic equilibrium model of asset pricing and investor choice. We show that strong social interaction can lead to endogenous switching between two persistent regimes for the mean choice fraction of investor population, which can simultaneously generate volatility clustering and time-series momentum in asset returns. By using StockTwits post volume as a proxy for social interaction, we provide empirical evidence for the model predictions for various equity indices.

Market Clearing and Krusell-Smith Algorithm in an Economy with Multiple Assets

This paper proposes a novel method to compute the Krusell and Smith (1997, 1998) algorithm, used for solving heterogeneous-agents models with aggregate risk and incomplete markets when households can save in more than one asset. When used to solve a model with more than one asset, the standard algorithm has to impose equilibria for each additional asset (find the market-clearing price) in each period simulated. This procedure entails root-finding in each period, which is computationally expensive. I show that it is possible to avoid root-finding at this level by not imposing equilibria each period, but instead temporarily suspending market clearing. The proposed method then updates the law of motion for asset prices by using the information on the excess demand for assets via a Newton-like method. Since the method avoids the root-finding for each time period simulated, it leads to a significant reduction in computation time. In the example model with two assets, the proposed version of the algorithm leads to an 80% decrease in computational time, even when measured conservatively. This method is potentially useful in computing general equilibrium asset-pricing models with risky and safe assets, featuring both aggregate and uninsurable idiosyncratic risk, since methods that use linearisation in the neighborhood of the aggregate steady state are considered to be less accurate than global solution methods for such models.

Generalized disappointment aversion and the cross-section of stock returns

ABSTRACT Based on Epstein and Zin’s recursive utility function, this paper integrates generalized disappointment aversion preferences to derive an intertemporal equilibrium asset pricing model (ICAPM). We show that in addition to discount-rate news, cash-flow news, and news about future risk, four factors related to disappointment are priced. These four factors are a downstate factor, discount-rate downside news, cash-flow downside news, and downside news about future risk. We find that our seven-factor model can explain the cross-section of expected returns across portfolios sorted by size, book-to-market, investment, operating profitability, and momentum. Both the seven-beta ICAPM and the restricted seven-beta ICAPM suggest that disappointment-averse investors are more sensitive to cash-flow news and cash-flow downside news than other news terms and therefore demand higher premiums. Our results show that the seven-beta ICAPM has better performance for most portfolios and provides empirical support for investors’ asymmetric preferences.

Extreme Inflation and Time-Varying Expected Consumption Growth

In a parsimonious regime switching model, we find strong evidence that expected consumption growth varies over time. Adding inflation as a second variable, we uncover two states in which expected consumption growth is low, one with high and one with negative expected inflation. Embedded in a general equilibrium asset pricing model with learning, these dynamics replicate the observed time variation in stock return volatilities and stock-bond return correlations. They also provide an alternative derivation for a measure of time-varying disaster risk suggested by Watcher [ Wachter J (2013 ) Can time-varying risk of rare disasters explain aggregate stock market volatility? J. Finance 68(3):987–1035]. implying that both the disaster and the long-run risk paradigm can be extended toward explaining movements in the stock-bond correlation. This paper was accepted by Kay Giesecke, finance. Funding: We gratefully acknowledge research and financial support from the Leibniz Center for Financial Research SAFE (formerly Research Center SAFE, funded by the State of Hessen initiative for research LOEWE). Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4451 .

Risk premia, asset price bubbles, and monetary policy

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium asset pricing model with heterogeneous beliefs to study the effects of monetary policy on prices, risk premia, asset price bubbles, and financial stability. We propose a new framework for monetary policy with respect to bubbles. Because bubble risk premia arise from an interaction between disagreements among investors and dynamic trading constraints, under a non-accommodative monetary policy, liquidity adjusted risk and bubble risk premia increase. What matters for policy is the trading constrained fraction/mass of agents that disagree about fundamentals (i.e. optimists/pessimists). Accommodative policy can lead to a larger fraction of trading constrained agents that disagree, larger bubbles, and increased systemic risk. An implication of our results is that accommodative monetary policy in response to the Covid-19 crisis does not increase systemic risk due to asset price bubbles, as long as the policy keeps inflation under control.

The saving, human wealth and asset pricing nexus: Evidence from around the world

The present study examines the dynamics of the saving, human wealth and asset pricing nexus across developed and emerging economies. We introduce two equilibrium asset pricing models in an intertemporal capital asset pricing framework, including the priced factors human wealth and market portfolio in the first framework and the saving and market portfolio in the second framework. Both asset pricing frameworks consist of two-factor, four-factor and five-factor asset pricing models. We control for size and value factors in the four-factor model and size, value and momentum factors in the five-factor model. The IV-GMM estimation and GRS test results indicate that human wealth and market portfolio for the first framework and saving and market portfolio in the second framework are primary priced factors in explaining the average returns for developed economies and the aggregate level. On the contrary, both frameworks fail to yield significant results explaining the average returns for emerging economies.

Treasury inconvenience yields during the COVID-19 crisis

In sharp contrast to most previous crisis episodes, the Treasury market experienced severe stress and illiquidity during the COVID-19 crisis, raising concerns that the safe-haven status of US Treasuries may be eroding. We document large shifts in Treasury ownership and temporary accumulation of Treasury and reverse repo positions on dealer balance sheets during this period. We build a dynamic equilibrium asset pricing model in which dealers subject to regulatory balance sheet constraints intermediate demand/supply shocks from habitat agents and provide repo financing to levered investors. The model predicts that Treasury inconvenience yields, measured as the spread between Treasuries and overnight-index swap rates (OIS), as well as spreads between dealers’ reverse repo and repo rates, should be highly positive during the COVID-19 crisis, as is confirmed in the data. The same model framework, adapted to the institutional setting in 2007–2009, can also explain the negative Treasury-OIS spread observed during the Great Recession.

Stability of equilibrium asset pricing models: A necessary and sufficient condition

We obtain an exact necessary and sufficient condition for the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium asset prices in infinite horizon, discrete-time, arbitrage free environments. Using local spectral radius methods, we connect the condition, and hence the problem of existence and uniqueness of asset prices, with the recent literature on stochastic discount factor decompositions. Our results include a globally convergent method for computing prices whenever they exist. Convergence of this iterative method itself implies both existence and uniqueness of equilibrium asset prices.

Asset Pricing Implications Of The Mismatch Between Performance Window And Benchmark Duration

This paper studies the mismatch between asset managers' performance window and the time average of their benchmark dividend payouts, commonly referred to as duration. Our asset pricing equilibrium mechanism provides the first plausible theoretical foundation for the recent empirical findings showing that the risk premium, volatility, and Sharpe ratio on short-term dividend strips are higher than long-term dividend strips. These findings are at odds with the leading equilibrium asset pricing models, such as long-run risk, external habit formation, and rare disaster risk models. Our continuous-time setup admits precise closed-form expressions. We provide novel empirical evidence to support other model predictions.

Term Structure of Equity and Bond Yields over Business Cycles

Recent findings on the term structure of equity and bond yields pose serious challenges to existing equilibrium asset pricing models. This paper presents a new equilibrium model of subjective expectations to explain the joint historical dynamics of equity and bond yields (and their yield spreads). Equity/bond yields movements are mainly driven by subjective dividend/GDP growth expectations. Yields on short-term dividend claims are more volatile because short-term dividend growth expectation mean-reverts to its less volatile long-run counterpart. Procyclical slope of equity yields is due to the counter-cyclical slope of dividend growth expectations. The correlation between equity returns/yields and nominal bond returns/yields switched from positive to negative after the late 1990s, mainly owing to a stronger correlation between real GDP growth and real dividend growth expectations, and only partially due to procyclical inflation. Dividend strip returns are predictable and the strength of predictability decreases with maturity due to predictable dividend forecast errors and revisions. The model is also consistent with the data in generating persistent and volatile price-dividend ratios, and excess return volatility.

Equilibrium Asset Pricing in Directed Networks*

Abstract Directed links in cash flow networks affect the cross-section of risk premia through three channels. In a tractable consumption-based equilibrium asset pricing model, we obtain closed-form solutions that disentangle these channels for arbitrary directed networks. First, shocks that can propagate through the economy command a higher market price of risk. Second, shock-receiving assets earn an extra premium since their valuation ratios drop upon shocks in connected assets. Third, a hedge effect pushes risk premia down: when a shock propagates through the economy, an asset that is unconnected becomes relatively more attractive and its valuation ratio increases.

NOTE: An Equilibrium Asset Pricing Model for Stocks and Bonds under Growth and Inflation Risks

This technical note details an equilibrium asset pricing model for stocks and bonds under economic growth and inflation uncertainties using the Epstein and Zin preferences. Specifically, the results show that both equity and bond risk premiums are priced by growth and inflation uncertainties. This note provides a theoretical justification on the common industry choice of considering growth and inflation as the underlying drivers for assets' returns.

Term Structures of Equity and Interest Rates in Time-Varying Expected Growth Models

Equilibrium asset-pricing models with time-varying expected economic growth have been criticized for their apparent inability to generate an upward-sloping yield curve and downward-sloping term structures of equity risk and risk premium. We theoretically investigate the model-implied equilibrium relationships between the shape of these term structures, the dynamics of economic fundamentals, and the representative agent's preferences. We show that this class of models is, in fact, flexible in its ability to reproduce the aforementioned shapes, while also generating realistic asset-pricing moments.

Left Behind: Creative Destruction, Inequality, and the Stock Market

We develop a general equilibrium model of asset prices in which benefits of technological innovation are distributed asymmetrically. Financial market participants do not capture all economic gains ...

Learning, Equilibrium Trend, Cycle, and Spread in Bond Yields

Some key features in the historical dynamics of U.S. Treasury bond yields – a trend in long-term yields, business cycle movements in short-term yields, and a level shift in yield spreads – pose serious challenges to existing equilibrium asset pricing models. This paper presents a new equilibrium model to jointly explain these key features. The trend is generated by learning from the stable components in GDP growth and inflation, which share similar patterns to the neutral rate of interest (r Star) and trend inflation (pi Star) estimates in the literature. Cyclical movements in yields and spreads are mainly driven by learning from the transitory components in GDP growth and inflation. The less-frequent inverted yield curves observed after the 1990s are due to the recent secular stagnation and procyclical inflation expectation.

Debt Sustainability When R – G < 0: No Free Lunch After All

Interest rates on public debt have for several years now fallen short of GDP growth rates in much of the Western world. In his presidential address to the AEA Blanchard argued that this implies that there are no costs to high debt. In this paper we argue that the safe rate is not the right interest rate to use for that comparison. We develop a General Equilibrium Asset Pricing model and econometrically estimate the relevant characteristics of the stochastic processes driving the primary surplus in relation to the growth rate of aggregate consumption and derive the proper risk premium. The resulting interest rate exceeds the growth rate. We then calculate the discounted value of future primary surpluses using the same stochastic process for the primary surplus and compare that to the market value of the (Dutch) public sector debt. We test various explanations for the gap between these two and derive the adjustment necessary to eliminate it (the fiscal sustainability gap).

The Risks of Safe Assets

How much safety and liquidity can the US government provide? Should it accommodate demand for these attributes because high convenience yields in Treasuries lower its borrowing cost? We evaluate a novel fiscal risk channel limiting the government's capacity to issue debt through the lens of a general equilibrium asset pricing model with a rich fiscal sector. Expanding safe asset supply lowers safety premia and improves liquidity in financial markets, but creates tax and consumption volatility, raising risk premia, credit spreads, and firms' cost of capital. Our model predicts that this risk channel leads to depressed growth prospects, rising Treasury yields, and elevated consumption risk, for which we find strong empirical evidence. We use our model to quantitatively evaluate current proposals on stimulus and stabilization packages and find that the risk channel is exacerbated in times of fiscal stress. Increasing safe asset supply can thus be risky, and have a significant fiscal cost.