IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v132y2017i2p765-809..html

Financial Crises and Risk Premia

Author

Listed:
  • Tyler Muir

Abstract

I analyze the behavior of risk premia in financial crises, wars, and recessions in an international panel spanning over 140 years and 14 countries. I document that expected returns, or risk premia, increase substantially in financial crises, but not in the other episodes. Asset prices decline in all episodes, but the decline in financial crises is substantially larger than the decline in fundamentals so that expected returns going forward are large. However, drops in consumption and consumption volatility are fairly similar across financial crises and recessions and are largest during wars, so asset pricing models based on aggregate consumption have trouble matching these facts. Comparing crises to “deep” recessions strengthens these findings further. By disentangling financial crises from other bad macroeconomic times, the results suggest that financial crises are particularly important to understanding why risk premia vary. I discuss implications for theory more broadly and discuss both rational and behavioral models that are consistent with the facts. Theories where asset prices are related to the health of the financial sector appear particularly promising.

Suggested Citation

  • Tyler Muir, 2017. "Financial Crises and Risk Premia," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(2), pages 765-809.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:132:y:2017:i:2:p:765-809.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjw045
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bernanke, Ben S. & Gertler, Mark & Gilchrist, Simon, 1999. "The financial accelerator in a quantitative business cycle framework," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 21, pages 1341-1393, Elsevier.
    2. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Yuliy Sannikov, 2014. "A Macroeconomic Model with a Financial Sector," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(2), pages 379-421, February.
    3. Robert J. Barro & Jose F. Ursua, 2008. "Consumption Disasters in the Twentieth Century," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 58-63, May.
    4. Michael Bordo & Barry Eichengreen & Daniela Klingebiel & Maria Soledad Martinez-Peria, 2001. "Is the crisis problem growing more severe?," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 16(32), pages 52-82.
    5. Michael D. Bordo & Joseph G. Haubrich, 2017. "Deep Recessions, Fast Recoveries, And Financial Crises: Evidence From The American Record," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(1), pages 527-541, January.
    6. Òscar Jordà & Moritz Schularick & Alan M. Taylor, 2013. "When Credit Bites Back," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 45(s2), pages 3-28, December.
    7. John Y. Campbell & John Cochrane, 1999. "Force of Habit: A Consumption-Based Explanation of Aggregate Stock Market Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(2), pages 205-251, April.
    8. Emi Nakamura & Jón Steinsson & Robert Barro & José Ursúa, 2013. "Crises and Recoveries in an Empirical Model of Consumption Disasters," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 35-74, July.
    9. Shiller, Robert J, 1981. "Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 421-436, June.
    10. Simon Gilchrist & Egon Zakrajsek, 2012. "Credit Spreads and Business Cycle Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1692-1720, June.
    11. John Geanakoplos, 2009. "The Leverage Cycle," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1715, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    12. Tobias Adrian & Erkko Etula & Tyler Muir, 2014. "Financial Intermediaries and the Cross-Section of Asset Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(6), pages 2557-2596, December.
    13. Zhiguo He & Arvind Krishnamurthy, 2013. "Intermediary Asset Pricing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(2), pages 732-770, April.
    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. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95, May.
    2. Villacorta, Alonso, 2018. "Business cycles and the balance sheets of the financial and non-financial sectors," ESRB Working Paper Series 68, European Systemic Risk Board.
    3. Guerrieri, V. & Uhlig, H., 2016. "Housing and Credit Markets," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1427-1496, Elsevier.
    4. Arvind Krishnamurthy & Tyler Muir, 2025. "How Credit Cycles across a Financial Crisis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 80(3), pages 1339-1378, June.
    5. Kargar, Mahyar, 2021. "Heterogeneous intermediary asset pricing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(2), pages 505-532.
    6. Berthold, Brendan, 2023. "The macroeconomic effects of uncertainty and risk aversion shocks," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    7. Li, Zehao, 2022. "Financial intermediary leverage and monetary policy transmission," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    8. Han, Leyla Jianyu & Kasa, Kenneth & Luo, Yulei, 2024. "Ambiguity, information processing, and financial intermediation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    9. Tobias Adrian & Nellie Liang, 2018. "Monetary Policy, Financial Conditions, and Financial Stability," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 14(1), pages 73-131, January.
    10. Arvind Krishnamurthy & Wenhao Li, 2025. "Dissecting Mechanisms of Financial Crises: Intermediation and Sentiment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 133(3), pages 935-985.
    11. Tobias Adrian & Richard K. Crump & Erik Vogt, 2019. "Nonlinearity and Flight‐to‐Safety in the Risk‐Return Trade‐Off for Stocks and Bonds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(4), pages 1931-1973, August.
    12. Modena, Andrea, 2020. "Recapitalization, bailout, and long-run welfare in a dynamic model of banking," SAFE Working Paper Series 292, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    13. Kim, Dohan, 2025. "The Asymmetric Bank Distress Amplifier of Recessions," Policy Research Working Paper Series 11170, The World Bank.
    14. Tomohiro Hirano & Ryo Jinnai & Alexis Akira Toda, 2022. "Leverage, Endogenous Unbalanced Growth, and Asset Price Bubbles," Papers 2211.13100, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    15. Rochet, Jean Charles & Gersbach, Hans & Scheffel, Martin, 2015. "Financial Intermediation, Capital Accumulation, and Recovery," CEPR Discussion Papers 10964, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Ye Li, 2018. "Fragile New Economy: The Rise of Intangible Capital and Financial Instability," 2018 Meeting Papers 1189, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. policy, Work stream on macroprudential & Albertazzi, Ugo & Martin, Alberto & Assouan, Emmanuelle & Tristani, Oreste & Galati, Gabriele & Vlassopoulos, Thomas, 2021. "The role of financial stability considerations in monetary policy and the interaction with macroprudential policy in the euro area," Occasional Paper Series 272, European Central Bank.
    18. Jondeau, Eric & Sahuc, Jean-Guillaume, 2022. "Bank capital shortfall in the euro area," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    19. Jeremy C. Stein, 2021. "Can Policy Tame the Credit Cycle?," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 69(1), pages 5-22, March.
    20. Lewis, Kurt F. & Longstaff, Francis A. & Petrasek, Lubomir, 2021. "Asset mispricing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(3), pages 981-1006.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G01 - Financial Economics - - General - - - Financial Crises
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

    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:oup:qjecon:v:132:y:2017:i:2:p:765-809.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

    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.