McGrattan and Prescott (2003) argue that the average equity premium is less than one percent when the annual data used in the computation are adjusted in certain ways: equity returns reduced by subtracting diversification costs and taxes on dividend yields, and debt yields are raised by using long-term debt (instead of 90-day T-Bills) and ignoring the 1935-1960 period of government regulation of the financial sector. This note takes the adjusted measurements proposed by McGrattan and Prescott (2003) and subjects them to statistical tests in an attempt to examine the equity premium puzzle. The findings suggest that using their series solves the `average equity premium' puzzle but the `low risk-free rate' and `excess volatility' puzzles remain as challenges to standard theory.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. 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.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Macroeconomics with number
0402009.
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.:
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.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)