Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Earnings Inequality and the Equity Premium

Contents:

Author Info

  • Walentin, Karl

    () (Research Department, Central Bank of Sweden)

Abstract

We present data from the Survey of Consumer Finances showing that the increased earnings (labor income) inequality, in combination with increased stockmarket partic- ipation, has roughly doubled stockholders’share of aggregate labor income in the last four decades. We explore the impact of the increase in this share on returns to equity and returns to a risk-free bond in a model with limited stockmarket participation, labor income and borrowing constraints. The main result is that the increase in stockholders’ share of aggregate labor income has lead to 130 basis points (45 percent) decrease in the ex ante equity premium (i.e. the discount rate applied to equity). The reason for this change is that the increase in stockholders’share of aggregate labor income leads to a change in income composition for stockholders - an increase in the fraction of their income that consists of labor income and a decrease in the fraction that consists of dividend income. This reduces the covariance between stockholder income growth and dividend growth. The size of the decrease in the equity premium implied by our model roughly coincides with the historical change in the post-1951 equity premium implied by the simple dividend growth model in Fama and French (2002).

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.riksbank.se/upload/Dokument_riksbank/Kat_publicerat/WorkingPapers/2007/wp215.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden) in its series Working Paper Series with number 215.

as in new window
Length: 27 pages
Date of creation: 01 Nov 2007
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hhs:rbnkwp:0215

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Sveriges Riksbank, SE-103 37 Stockholm, Sweden
Phone: 08 - 787 00 00
Fax: 08-21 05 31
Email:
Web page: http://www.riksbank.com/
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords: labor income; earnings inequality; asset pricing; equity premium; limited participation; borrowing constraints;

Other versions of this item:

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. R. Mehra & E. Prescott, 2010. "The equity premium: a puzzle," Levine's Working Paper Archive 1401, David K. Levine.
  2. M. Fatih Guvenen, 2003. "A Parsimonious Macroeconomic Model for Asset Pricing: Habit Formation or Cross-sectional Heterogeneity?," RCER Working Papers 499, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
  3. Lettau, Martin & Ludvigson, Sydney & Wachter, Jessica, 2006. "The Declining Equity Premium: What Role Does Macroeconomic Risk Play?," CEPR Discussion Papers 5519, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  4. Basak, Suleyman & Cuoco, Domenico, 1998. "An Equilibrium Model with Restricted Stock Market Participation," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(2), pages 309-41.
  5. George M. Constantinides & John B. Donaldson & Rajnish Mehra, 2002. "Junior Can'T Borrow: A New Perspective On The Equity Premium Puzzle," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 117(1), pages 269-296, February.
  6. Ian Dew-Becker & Robert J. Gordon, 2005. "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go? Inflation Dynamics and the Distribution of Income," NBER Working Papers 11842, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  7. Tauchen, George & Hussey, Robert, 1991. "Quadrature-Based Methods for Obtaining Approximate Solutions to Nonlinear Asset Pricing Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(2), pages 371-96, March.
  8. Chris I. Telmer, 1991. "Asset Pricing Puzzles and Incomplete Markets," Working Papers 806, Queen's University, Department of Economics.
  9. John Y. Campbell, 2007. "Estimating the Equity Premium," NBER Working Papers 13423, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. Hui Guo, 2003. "Limited stock market participation and asset prices in a dynamic economy," Working Papers 2000-031, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
  11. Dirk Krueger & Fabrizio Perri, 2002. "Does Income Inequality Lead to Consumption Inequality? Evidence and Theory," NBER Working Papers 9202, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  12. John Heaton & Deborah Lucas, 1993. "Evaluating the Effects of Incomplete Markets on Risk Sharing and Asset Pricing," NBER Working Papers 4249, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  13. Eugene Fama & F. & Kenneth R. French, . "The Equity Premium."," CRSP working papers 522, Center for Research in Security Prices, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.
  14. Audra J. Bowlus & Jean-Marc Robin, 2004. "Twenty Years of Rising Inequality in U.S. Lifetime Labour Income Values," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 71, pages 709-742, 07.
  15. Lubos Pastor & Robert F. Stambaugh, . "The Equity Premium and Structural Breaks," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 11-00, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
  16. Juan Carols Hatchondo, 2005. "A quantitative study of the role of wealth inequality on asset prices," Working Paper 05-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
  17. Kjetil Storesletten & Chris I. Telmer & Amir Yaron, 2004. "Cyclical Dynamics in Idiosyncratic Labor Market Risk," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(3), pages 695-717, June.
  18. Laurent Calvet & Martin Gonzalez-Eiras & Paolo Sodini, 2001. "Financial Innovation, Market Participation and Asset Prices," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1928, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
  19. Chang-Jin Kim & James C. Morley & Charles Nelson, 2000. "Is There a Positive Relationship between Stock Market Volatility and the Equity Premium?," Working Papers 0023, University of Washington, Department of Economics.
  20. Katz, Lawrence F. & Autor, David H., 1999. "Changes in the wage structure and earnings inequality," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 26, pages 1463-1555 Elsevier.
  21. John Heaton & Deborah Lucas, 2000. "Stock Prices and Fundamentals," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1999, Volume 14, pages 213-264 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  22. Francisco Gomes & Alexander Michaelides, 2008. "Asset Pricing with Limited Risk Sharing and Heterogeneous Agents," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(1), pages 415-448, January.
  23. Kim, Chang-Jin & Morley, James C. & Nelson, Charles R., 2005. "The Structural Break in the Equity Premium," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 23, pages 181-191, April.
  24. Polkovnichenko, Valery, 2004. "Limited stock market participation and the equity premium," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 24-34, March.
  25. Andrew B. Abel, 2006. "Equity Premia with Benchmark Levels of Consumption: Closed-Form Results," NBER Working Papers 12290, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  26. Jack Favilukis, 2007. "Inequality, Stock Market Participation, and the Equity Premium," FMG Discussion Papers dp602, Financial Markets Group.
  27. Poterba, J.M. & Samwick, A.A., 1996. "Stock Ownership Patterns, Stock Market Fluctuations, and Consumption," Working papers 96-2, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
  28. Hanno Lustig & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, 2006. "Can Housing Collateral Explain Long-Run Swings in Asset Returns?," NBER Working Papers 12766, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  29. Heathcote, Jonathan & Storesletten, Kjetil & Violante, Giovanni L, 2004. "The Cross-Sectional Implications of Rising Wage Inequality in the United States," CEPR Discussion Papers 4296, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  30. Gollier, C., 1997. "Wealth Inequality and Asset Pricing," Papers 97.486, Toulouse - GREMAQ.
  31. Ravi Jagannathan & Ellen R. McGrattan & Anna Scherbina., 2000. "The declining U.S. equity premium," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, issue Fall, pages 3-19.
  32. Giorgio Primiceri & Thijs van Rens, 2002. "Inequality over the Business Cycle: Estimating Income Risk using Micro-Data on Consumption," Macroeconomics 0212003, EconWPA.
  33. Jan Carlos Hatchondo, 2008. "A quantitative study of the role of wealth inequality on asset prices," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Win, pages 73-96.
  34. Tano Santos & Pietro Veronesi, 2006. "Labor Income and Predictable Stock Returns," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(1), pages 1-44.
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:hhs:rbnkwp:0215

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

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.