IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/fip/fedmqr/y2000ifallp20-40nv.24no.4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is the stock market overvalued?

Author

Listed:
  • Ellen R. McGrattan
  • Edward C. Prescott

Abstract

The value of U.S. corporate equity in the first half of 2000 was close to 1.8 times U.S. gross national product (GNP). Some stock market analysts have argued that the market is overvalued at this level. We use a growth model with an explicit corporate sector and find that the market is correctly valued. In theory, the market value of equity plus debt liabilities should equal the value of productive assets plus debt assets. Since the net value of debt is currently low, the market value of equity should be approximately equal to the market value of productive assets. We find that the market value of productive assets, including both tangible and intangible assets and assets used outside the country by U.S. subsidiaries, is currently about 1.8 times GNP, the same as the market value of equity.

Suggested Citation

  • Ellen R. McGrattan & Edward C. Prescott, 2000. "Is the stock market overvalued?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 24(Fall), pages 20-40.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmqr:y:2000:i:fall:p:20-40:n:v.24no.4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr2442.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://minneapolisfed.org/research/qr/qr2442.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    2. Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2000. "Towards an Explanation of Household Portfolio Choice Heterogeneity: Nonfinancial Income and Participation Cost Structures," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1102, Econometric Society.
    3. 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, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 269-296.
    4. Mordecai Kurz & Andrea Beltratti, "undated". "The Equity Premium is No Puzzle," Working Papers 96004, Stanford University, Department of Economics.
    5. John H. Cochrane, 1988. "Production Based Asset Pricing," NBER Working Papers 2776, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Jermann, Urban J., 1998. "Asset pricing in production economies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 257-275, April.
    7. Stephen R. Bond & Jason G. Cummins, 2000. "The Stock Market and Investment in the New Economy: Some Tangible Facts and Intangible Fictions," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 31(1), pages 61-124.
    8. Miller, Merton H, 1977. "Debt and Taxes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 261-275, May.
    9. Cochrane, John H, 1991. "Production-Based Asset Pricing and the Link between Stock Returns and Economic Fluctuations," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 209-237, March.
    10. Narayana R. Kocherlakota, 1996. "The Equity Premium: It's Still a Puzzle," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(1), pages 42-71, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ellen R. McGrattan & Edward C. Prescott, 2001. "Taxes, regulations, and asset prices," Working Papers 610, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    2. Roelof Salomons, 2008. "A Theoretical And Practical Perspective On The Equity Risk Premium," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 299-329, April.
    3. 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.
    4. Jermann, Urban J., 2010. "The equity premium implied by production," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 279-296, November.
    5. Francisco Gomes & Alexander Michaelides, 2008. "Asset Pricing with Limited Risk Sharing and Heterogeneous Agents," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(1), pages 415-448, January.
    6. George Constantinides & John Donaldson & Rajnish Mehra, 2007. "Junior is rich: bequests as consumption," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 32(1), pages 125-155, July.
    7. Sialm, Clemens, 2006. "Stochastic taxation and asset pricing in dynamic general equilibrium," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 511-540, March.
    8. Rui Castro & Claudio Campanale & Gian Luca Clementi, 2007. "Asset Pricing in a General Equilibrium Production Economy with Chew-Dekel Risk Preferences," 2007 Meeting Papers 503, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. John Donaldson & Rajnish Mehra, 2007. "Risk Based Explanations of the Equity Premium," NBER Working Papers 13220, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Pithak Srisuksai & Vimut Vanitcharearntham, 2016. "Asset Pricing with Idiosyncratic Shocks," Applied Economics Journal, Kasetsart University, Faculty of Economics, Center for Applied Economic Research, vol. 23(1), pages 35-58, June.
    11. H. Youn Kim, 2003. "Intertemporal production and asset pricing: a duality approach," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 55(2), pages 344-379, April.
    12. Krebs, Tom & Wilson, Bonnie, 2004. "Asset returns in an endogenous growth model with incomplete markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 817-839, January.
    13. Krebs, Tom & Wilson, Bonnie, 2004. "Asset returns in an endogenous growth model with incomplete markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 817-839, January.
    14. Kim, Sei-Wan & Krausz, Joshua & Nam, Kiseok, 2013. "Revisiting asset pricing under habit formation in an overlapping-generations economy," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 132-138.
    15. Kevin E. Beaubrun-Diant & Julien Matheron, 2008. "Rentabilités d'actifs et fluctuations économiques : une perspective d'équilibre général dynamique et stochastique," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(2), pages 35-63.
    16. Axel Börsch‐Supan & Alexander Ludwig & Joachim Winter, 2006. "Ageing, Pension Reform and Capital Flows: A Multi‐Country Simulation Model," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 73(292), pages 625-658, November.
    17. Zhihong Shi, 2018. "Asset Pricing with Overlapping Generations and the Housing Market," International Journal of Business and Economics, School of Management Development, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, vol. 17(1), pages 17-24, June.
    18. David N. DeJong & Emilio Espino, 2007. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equity Turnover," Working Paper 294, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Jun 2010.
    19. Ellen R. McGrattan & Edward C. Prescott, 2005. "Taxes, Regulations, and the Value of U.S. and U.K. Corporations," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 72(3), pages 767-796.
    20. Alan Guoming Huang & Eric Hughson & J. Chris Leach, 2016. "Generational Asset Pricing, Equity Puzzles, and Cyclicality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 22, pages 52-71, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Stock market;

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • E13 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Neoclassical

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedmqr:y:2000:i:fall:p:20-40:n:v.24no.4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kate Hansel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cfrbmus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.