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Is There Evidence of Pessimism and Doubt in Subjective Distributions? A Comment on Abel

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Author Info
Giordani, Paolo
Söderlind, Paul

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Abstract

Abel (2002) shows that pessimism and doubt in the subjective distribution of the growth rate of consumption reduce the risk-free rate puzzle and the equity premium puzzle. We quantify the amount of pessimism and doubt in survey data on US consumption and income. Individual forecasters are, in fact, pessimistic, but show marked overconfidence rather than doubt. Whether this implies that overconfidence should be built into Abel’s model depends on how the empirically heterogeneous subjective distributions are mapped into the distribution of a fictitious representative agent. We work out the form of this mapping in an Arrow-Debreu economy and show that the equity premium increases with the dispersion of beliefs. We then estimate this aggregate distribution and find little evidence of either overconfidence or doubt.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 4068.

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Date of creation: Sep 2003
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:4068

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Keywords: aggregation of beliefs C42 equity premium livingston survey risk-free rate survey of professional forecasters

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Detemple Jerome & Murthy Shashidhar, 1994. "Intertemporal Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Beliefs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 294-320, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Matthew Rabin, 1998. "Psychology and Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 11-46, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. David Hirshleifer, 2001. "Investor Psychology and Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1533-1597, 08. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Giordani, Paolo & Soderlind, Paul, 2003. "Inflation forecast uncertainty," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 1037-1059, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Benartzi, Shlomo & Thaler, Richard H, 1995. "Myopic Loss Aversion and the Equity Premium Puzzle," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 110(1), pages 73-92, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Varian, Hal R, 1985. " Divergence of Opinion in Complete Markets: A Note," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(1), pages 309-17, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Christoffersen, Peter F, 1998. "Evaluating Interval Forecasts," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(4), pages 841-62, November.
  9. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1978. "Asset Prices in an Exchange Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1429-45, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Louis K. C. Chan & Jason Karceski & Josef Lakonishok, 2003. "The Level and Persistence of Growth Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(2), pages 643-684, 04. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Abel, Andrew B., 2002. "An exploration of the effects of pessimism and doubt on asset returns," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 26(7-8), pages 1075-1092, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Nicholas Barberis & Ming Huang & Tano Santos, 2001. "Prospect Theory And Asset Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 116(1), pages 1-53, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Rubinstein, Mark, 1974. "An aggregation theorem for securities markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(3), pages 225-244, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Joseph Engelberg & Charles F. Manski & Jared Williams, 2006. "Comparing the Point Predictions and Subjective Probability Distributions of Professional Forecasters," NBER Working Papers 11978, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Olivier Armantier & Nicolas Treich, 2006. "Overbidding in Independant Private-Values Auctions and Misperception of Probabilities," CIRANO Working Papers 2006s-15, CIRANO. [Downloadable!]
  3. Elyès Jouini & Clotilde Napp, 2006. "Heterogeneous Beliefs and Asset Pricing in Discrete Time: An Analysis of Pessimism and Doubt," Post-Print halshs-00176500_v1, HAL. [Downloadable!]
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