IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedpwp/01-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An exploration of the effects of pessimism and doubt on asset returns

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew B. Abel

Abstract

The subjective distribution of growth rates of aggregate consumption is characterized by pessimism if it is first-order stochastically dominated by the objective distribution. Uniform pessimism is a leftward translation of the objective distribution of the logarithm of the growth rate. The subjective distribution is characterized by doubt if it is mean-preserving spread of the objective distribution. Pessimism and doubt both reduce the riskfree rate and thus can help resolve the riskfree rate puzzle. Uniform pessimism and doubt both increase the average equity premium and thus can help resolve the equity premium puzzle.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew B. Abel, 2001. "An exploration of the effects of pessimism and doubt on asset returns," Working Papers 01-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedpwp:01-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/working-papers/2001/wp01-1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lars Peter Hansen & Thomas J Sargent, 2014. "Robust Permanent Income and Pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: UNCERTAINTY WITHIN ECONOMIC MODELS, chapter 3, pages 33-81, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Kandel, Shmuel & Stambaugh, Robert F., 1991. "Asset returns and intertemporal preferences," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 39-71, February.
    3. Weil, Philippe, 1989. "The equity premium puzzle and the risk-free rate puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 401-421, November.
    4. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/8686 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Cecchetti, Stephen G & Lam, Pok-sang & Mark, Nelson C, 1990. "Mean Reversion in Equilibrium Asset Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 398-418, June.
    6. Pok-sang Lam & Stephen G. Cecchetti & Nelson C. Mark, 2000. "Asset Pricing with Distorted Beliefs: Are Equity Returns Too Good to Be True?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 787-805, September.
    7. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    8. Rietz, Thomas A., 1988. "The equity risk premium a solution," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 117-131, July.
    9. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1978. "Asset Prices in an Exchange Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1429-1445, November.
    10. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1988. "The equity risk premium: A solution?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 133-136, July.
    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. 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.
    2. Guidolin, Massimo, 2006. "Pessimistic beliefs under rational learning: Quantitative implications for the equity premium puzzle," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 85-118.
    3. Nengjiu Ju & Jianjun Miao, 2012. "Ambiguity, Learning, and Asset Returns," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(2), pages 559-591, March.
    4. Pok-sang Lam & Stephen G. Cecchetti & Nelson C. Mark, 2000. "Asset Pricing with Distorted Beliefs: Are Equity Returns Too Good to Be True?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 787-805, September.
    5. Rodriguez, Juan Carlos, 2006. "Consumption, the persistence of shocks, and asset price volatility," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(8), pages 1741-1760, November.
    6. Max Gillman & Michal Kejak & Michal Pakoš, 2015. "Learning about Rare Disasters: Implications For Consumption and Asset Prices," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 1053-1104.
    7. John Y. Campbell, 2003. "Two Puzzles of Asset Pricing and Their Implications for Investors," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 47(1), pages 48-74, March.
    8. Jun Ma, 2013. "Long‐Run Risk and Its Implications for the Equity Premium Puzzle: New Evidence from a Multivariate Framework," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 45(1), pages 121-145, February.
    9. John Y. Campbell, 2000. "Asset Pricing at the Millennium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1515-1567, August.
    10. Rajnish Mehra, 2003. "The Equity Premium: Why is it a Puzzle?," NBER Working Papers 9512, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. George M. Constantinides, 2006. "Market Organization And The Prices Of Financial Assets," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 74(s1), pages 1-23, September.
    12. John H. Cochrane, 1997. "Where is the market going? Uncertain facts and novel theories," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 21(Nov), pages 3-37.
    13. Max Gillman & Michal Kejak & Michal Pakos, 2014. "Learning about Disaster Risk: Joint Implications for Consumption and Asset Prices," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp507, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    14. Ravi Kashyap, 2016. "Solving the Equity Risk Premium Puzzle and Inching Towards a Theory of Everything," Papers 1604.04872, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2019.
    15. Bansal, Ravi & Khatchatrian, Varoujan & Yaron, Amir, 2005. "Interpretable asset markets?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 531-560, April.
    16. Aase, Knut K., 2004. "Jump Dynamics: The Equity Premium and the Risk-Free Rate Puzzles," Discussion Papers 2004/12, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    17. Calvet, Laurent-Emmanuel & Grandmont, Jean-Michel & Lemaire, Isabelle, 2018. "Aggregation of heterogenous beliefs, asset pricing, and risk sharing in complete financial markets," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 117-146.
    18. Bakshi, Gurdip & Skoulakis, Georgios, 2010. "Do subjective expectations explain asset pricing puzzles?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(3), pages 462-477, December.
    19. Rubens Penha Cysne, 2005. "Equity-Premium Puzzle: Evidence From Brazilian Data," Anais do XXXIII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 33rd Brazilian Economics Meeting] 088, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    20. Kashyap, Ravi, 2019. "The perfect marriage and much more: Combining dimension reduction, distance measures and covariance," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 536(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Asset pricing; Rational expectations (Economic theory);

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fedpwp:01-1. 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: Beth Paul (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbphus.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.