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The Wealth-Consumption Ratio

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Author Info
Hanno Lustig
Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh
Adrien Verdelhan

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Abstract

To measure the wealth-consumption ratio, we estimate an exponentially affine model of the stochastic discount factor on bond yields and stock returns. We use that discount factor to compute the no-arbitrage price of a claim to aggregate US consumption. Our estimates indicate that total wealth is much safer than stock market wealth. The consumption risk premium is only 2.2 percent, substantially below the equity risk premium of 6.9 percent. As a result, our estimate of the wealth-consumption ratio is much higher than the price-dividend ratio on stocks throughout the post-war period. The high wealth-consumption ratio implies that the average US household has a lot of wealth, most of it human wealth. A variance decomposition of the wealth-consumption ratio shows less return predictability overall, but most of the return predictability is for future interest rates, not excess returns. We conclude that the properties of the total wealth portfolio are more similar to those of a long-maturity bond portfolio than those of a stock portfolio. The differences that we find between the risk-return characteristics of equity and total wealth suggest that equity is a special asset class.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 13896.

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Date of creation: Mar 2008
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13896

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing

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Full references

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. Aoki, Shuhei & Kitahara, Minoru, 2008. "Measuring the Dynamic Cost of Living Index from Consumption Data," MPRA Paper 9802, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
  2. Sydney Ludvigson, 2008. "The Research Agenda: Sydney Ludvigson on Empirical Evaluation of Economic Theories of Risk Premia," EconomicDynamics Newsletter, Review of Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(2), April. [Downloadable!]
  3. Antonio Falato, 2008. "Happiness maintenance and asset prices," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2008-19, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
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