IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/3104.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Understanding Trend and Cycle in Asset Values: Bulls, Bears and the Wealth Effect on Consumption

Author

Listed:
  • Lettau, Martin
  • Ludvigson, Sydney

Abstract

This Paper uses restrictions implied by cointegration to identify the permanent and transitory elements (the ?trend? and ?cycle?) of household asset wealth. Our empirical analysis yields answers to the following questions: 1. Is there a large transitory component in household net worth or is wealth close to a random walk? Our point estimates imply that a striking 85% of the post-war variation in the growth of household net worth is transitory, attributable to fluctuations in the stock market component of wealth. Transitory wealth shocks are quite persistent, affecting asset values for a number of years. This transitory element picks out the ?bull markets? of the late 1960s and 1990s, and the ?bear? markets of the 1970s. If markets are efficient, these transitory fluctuations must be attributable to time-variation in the required rate of return on assets (discount rates). 2. How is transitory variation in household net worth related to consumer spending? Does consumption adapt with a lag to permanent movements in wealth? Despite their quantitative importance, transitory fluctuations in asset values are found to be unrelated to aggregate consumer spending. Instead, aggregate consumption can be well described as a function of the trend components in wealth and income. We find no evidence that consumption adapts with a long lag to fluctuations in wealth. 3. What kinds of shocks govern the dynamic behaviour of consumption, asset wealth and labour income? We characterize three: a permanent income shock that affects consumption, asset wealth and labour earnings without distorting their long-run equilibrium relation; an income redistributive shock that shifts the composition of income between labour and capital; and a discount rate shock that generates transitory variation in asset values.

Suggested Citation

  • Lettau, Martin & Ludvigson, Sydney, 2001. "Understanding Trend and Cycle in Asset Values: Bulls, Bears and the Wealth Effect on Consumption," CEPR Discussion Papers 3104, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:3104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP3104
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Owen Lamont, 1998. "Earnings and Expected Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(5), pages 1563-1587, October.
    2. Deaton, Angus, 1991. "Saving and Liquidity Constraints," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(5), pages 1221-1248, September.
    3. Harvey, A. C. & Stock, James H., 1988. "Continuous time autoregressive models with common stochastic trends," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 12(2-3), pages 365-384.
    4. John Muellbauer, 1988. "Habits, Rationality and Myopia in the Life Cycle Consumption Function," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 9, pages 47-70.
    5. Gonzalo, Jesus & Granger, Clive W J, 1995. "Estimation of Common Long-Memory Components in Cointegrated Systems," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 13(1), pages 27-35, January.
    6. Alan S. Blinder & Angus Deaton, 1985. "The Time Series Consumption Function Revisited," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 16(2), pages 465-521.
    7. Orazio P. Attanasio & Guglielmo Weber, 1993. "Consumption Growth, the Interest Rate and Aggregation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 631-649.
    8. Christopher D. Carroll, 1997. "Buffer-Stock Saving and the Life Cycle/Permanent Income Hypothesis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 1-55.
    9. Stock, James H & Watson, Mark W, 1993. "A Simple Estimator of Cointegrating Vectors in Higher Order Integrated Systems," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(4), pages 783-820, July.
    10. Ben S. Bernanke & Mark Gertler, 1999. "Monetary policy and asset price volatility," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 84(Q IV), pages 17-51.
    11. Hall, Robert E, 1988. "Intertemporal Substitution in Consumption," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(2), pages 339-357, April.
    12. Martin Lettau & Sydney Ludvigson, 2001. "Consumption, Aggregate Wealth, and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 815-849, June.
    13. Shiller, Robert J, 1981. "Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 421-436, June.
    14. J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    15. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1988. "Dividend yields and expected stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-25, October.
    16. Campbell, John Y, 1987. "Does Saving Anticipate Declining Labor Income? An Alternative Test of the Permanent Income Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(6), pages 1249-1273, November.
    17. Ng, Serena & Perron, Pierre, 1997. "Estimation and inference in nearly unbalanced nearly cointegrated systems," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 53-81, July.
    18. Beveridge, Stephen & Nelson, Charles R., 1981. "A new approach to decomposition of economic time series into permanent and transitory components with particular attention to measurement of the `business cycle'," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 151-174.
    19. Hodrick, Robert J, 1992. "Dividend Yields and Expected Stock Returns: Alternative Procedures for Inference and Measurement," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(3), pages 357-386.
    20. Cochrane, John H, 1992. "Explaining the Variance of Price-Dividend Ratios," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(2), pages 243-280.
    21. repec:adr:anecst:y:1988:i:9:p:03 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    23. Bart Hobijn & Boyan Jovanovic, 2001. "The Information-Technology Revolution and the Stock Market: Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1203-1220, December.
    24. Sydney Ludvigson, 1999. "Consumption And Credit: A Model Of Time-Varying Liquidity Constraints," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(3), pages 434-447, August.
    25. Karen E. Dynan, 2000. "Habit Formation in Consumer Preferences: Evidence from Panel Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 391-406, June.
    26. James M. Poterba, 2000. "Stock Market Wealth and Consumption," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 99-118, Spring.
    27. Tano Santos & Pietro Veronesi, 2000. "Labor Income and Predictable Stock Returns," CRSP working papers 520, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
    28. Phillips, Peter C B & Ouliaris, S, 1990. "Asymptotic Properties of Residual Based Tests for Cointegration," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 165-193, January.
    29. Flavin, Marjorie A, 1981. "The Adjustment of Consumption to Changing Expectations about Future Income," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 974-1009, October.
    30. Johansen, Soren, 1988. "Statistical analysis of cointegration vectors," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 12(2-3), pages 231-254.
    31. Jeffrey C. Fuhrer, 2000. "Habit Formation in Consumption and Its Implications for Monetary-Policy Models," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 367-390, June.
    32. Stock, James H, 1987. "Asymptotic Properties of Least Squares Estimators of Cointegrating Vectors," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(5), pages 1035-1056, September.
    33. LeRoy, Stephen F & Porter, Richard D, 1981. "The Present-Value Relation: Tests Based on Implied Variance Bounds," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(3), pages 555-574, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ciarlone, Alessio, 2011. "Housing wealth effect in emerging economies," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 399-417.
    2. Illing, Gerhard & Klüh, Ulrich, 2004. "Vermögenspreise und Konsum," Discussion Papers in Economics 316, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    3. Laurent Clerk & Christian Pfister, 2003. "The role of financial factors in the transmission of monetary policy," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Monetary policy in a changing environment, volume 19, pages 192-212, Bank for International Settlements.
    4. Alvarez, Fernando & Jermann, Urban J., 2001. "The Size of the Permanent Component of Asset Pricing Kernels," Working Papers 01-4, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Weiss Center.
    5. Eschenbach, Felix & Schuknecht, Ludger, 2002. "The fiscal costs of financial instability revisited," Working Paper Series 191, European Central Bank.
    6. Tano Santos & Pietro Veronesi, 2000. "Labor Income and Predictable Stock Returns," CRSP working papers 520, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
    7. Alessio Ciarlone, 2012. "Wealth effects in emerging economies," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 843, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    8. Lettau, Martin & Ludvigson, Sydney, 2002. "Time-varying risk premia and the cost of capital: An alternative implication of the Q theory of investment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 31-66, January.
    9. Gerhard Illing & Ulrich Klüh, 2005. "Vermögenspreise und Konsum: Neue Erkenntnisse, amerikanische Erfahrungen und europäische Herausforderungen," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 6(1), pages 1-22, February.
    10. Lise Pichette, 2004. "Are Wealth Effects Important for Canada," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2004(Spring), pages 29-35.
    11. Tano Santos & Pietro Veronesi, 2001. "Labor Income and Predictable Stock Returns," NBER Working Papers 8309, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Xavier Gabaix & David Laibson, 2002. "The 6D Bias and the Equity-Premium Puzzle," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2001, Volume 16, pages 257-330, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Mr. Alexander Ludwig & Mr. Torsten M Sloek, 2002. "The Impact of Changes in Stock Prices and House Priceson Consumption in OECD Countries," IMF Working Papers 2002/001, International Monetary Fund.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lettau, Martin & Ludvigson, Sydney C., 2005. "Expected returns and expected dividend growth," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 583-626, June.
    2. Martin Lettau & Sydney Ludvigson, 2001. "Consumption, Aggregate Wealth, and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 815-849, June.
    3. Martin Lettau & Sydney C. Ludvigson, 2004. "Understanding Trend and Cycle in Asset Values: Reevaluating the Wealth Effect on Consumption," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 276-299, March.
    4. Campbell, John Y., 2003. "Consumption-based asset pricing," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 803-887, Elsevier.
    5. Martin Lettau & Sydney Ludvigson, 2001. "Resurrecting the (C)CAPM: A Cross-Sectional Test When Risk Premia Are Time-Varying," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(6), pages 1238-1287, December.
    6. Sousa, Ricardo M., 2009. "Wealth effects on consumption: evidence from the euro area," Working Paper Series 1050, European Central Bank.
    7. John Y. Campbell, 2000. "Asset Pricing at the Millennium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1515-1567, August.
    8. Emilio Fernandez-Corugedo & Simon Price & Andrew Blake, 2003. "The dynamics of consumers' expenditure: the UK consumption ECM redux," Bank of England working papers 204, Bank of England.
    9. Orazio P. Attanasio, 1998. "Consumption Demand," NBER Working Papers 6466, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Daria Pignalosa, 2021. "The Euler Equation Approach: Critical Implications of Recent Developments in the Theory of Intertemporal Choice," Bulletin of Political Economy, Bulletin of Political Economy, vol. 15(1), pages 1-43, June.
    11. Emilio Fernandez-Corugedo, 2004. "Consumption Theory," Handbooks, Centre for Central Banking Studies, Bank of England, number 23, April.
    12. Jiang, Xiaoquan & Lee, Bong-Soo, 2007. "Stock returns, dividend yield, and book-to-market ratio," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 455-475, February.
    13. Hahn, Jaehoon & Lee, Hangyong, 2006. "Interpreting the predictive power of the consumption-wealth ratio," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 183-202, March.
    14. Orazio P. Attanasio & Guglielmo Weber, 2010. "Consumption and Saving: Models of Intertemporal Allocation and Their Implications for Public Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 693-751, September.
    15. Sousa, Ricardo M., 2010. "Consumption, (dis)aggregate wealth, and asset returns," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 606-622, September.
    16. Tim Bollerslev & Robert J. Hodrick, 1992. "Financial Market Efficiency Tests," NBER Working Papers 4108, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Rojo Suárez, Javier & Alonso Conde, Ana Belén & Ferrero Pozo, Ricardo, 2020. "European equity markets: Who is the truly representative investor?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 325-346.
    18. Issler, João Victor & Rodrigues, Claudia & Burjack, Rafael, 2014. "Using common features to understand the behavior of metal-commodity prices and forecast them at different horizons," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 310-335.
    19. Chen, Long, 2009. "On the reversal of return and dividend growth predictability: A tale of two periods," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 128-151, April.
    20. Keunbae Ahn, 2021. "Predictable Fluctuations in the Cross-Section and Time-Series of Asset Prices," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2021.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Wealth effect; Cointegration; Consumption; Asset values;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:3104. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.