Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Are Asset Returns Predictable from the National Accounts?

Contents:

Author Info

  • Pierre Lafourcade
Registered author(s):

    Abstract

    Rational expectations and the logic of budget constraints imply that the predictability of asset returns hinges on the stability and persistence of households' ratio of saving to asset wealth, not of consumption to total wealth. This misalignment undermines the rationale for Lettau and Ludvigson's estimated cay, a stationary but unduly loose approximation to the true but non-mean-reverting cay. Definitional considerations on saving, assets and returns suggest rehabilitating money in the households'  flow of funds identity. Accounting for money balances in cay restores stationarity, but at the cost of drastically lower persistence and predictive potential. 

    Download Info

    If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
    File URL: http://www.dnb.nl/binaries/Working%20Paper%20189_tcm46-208066.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department in its series DNB Working Papers with number 189.

    as in new window
    Length:
    Date of creation: Dec 2008
    Date of revision:
    Handle: RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:189

    Contact details of provider:
    Postal: Postbus 98, 1000 AB Amsterdam
    Web page: http://www.dnb.nl/en/
    More information through EDIRC

    Related research

    Keywords:

    Find related papers by JEL classification:

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    References

    References listed on IDEAS
    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.:
    as in new window
    1. Whelan, Karl, 2008. "Consumption and expected asset returns without assumptions about unobservables," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(7), pages 1209-1221, October.
    2. John Y. Campbell & N. Gregory Mankiw, 1990. "Consumption, Income, and Interest Rates: Reinterpreting the Time Series Evidence," NBER Working Papers 2924, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Michael Palumbo & Jeremy Rudd & Karl Whelan, 2002. "On the relationships between real consumption, income and wealth," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2002-38, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Sydney Ludvigson & Martin Lettau, 1999. "Consumption, aggregate wealth and expected stock returns," Staff Reports 77, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    5. Hoffmann, Mathias, 2006. "Balanced Growth and Empirical Proxies of the Consumption-Wealth Ratio," Technical Reports 2006,26, Technische Universität Dortmund, Sonderforschungsbereich 475: Komplexitätsreduktion in multivariaten Datenstrukturen.
    6. Gonzalo, Jesús & Ng, Serena, . "A systematic framework for analyzing the dynamic effects of permanent and transitory shocks," Open Access publications from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid info:hdl:10016/6203, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
    7. Martin Lettau & Sydney Ludvigson, 2003. "Understanding Trend and Cycle in Asset Values: Reevaluating the Wealth Effect on Consumption," NBER Working Papers 9848, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. John H. Cochrane, 2006. "The Dog That Did Not Bark: A Defense of Return Predictability," NBER Working Papers 12026, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Rudd, Jeremy & Whelan, Karl, 2006. "Empirical proxies for the consumption–wealth ratio," Open Access publications from University College Dublin urn:hdl:10197/212, University College Dublin.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Lists

    This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:189

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Rob Vet).

    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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

    If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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