IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/2957.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Business Cycles, Financial Crises, and Stock Volatility

Author

Listed:
  • G. William Schwert

Abstract

This paper shows that stock volatility increases during recessions and financial crises from 1834-1987. The evidence reinforces the notion that stock prices are an important business cycle indicator. Using two different statistical models for stock volatility, I show that volatility increases after major financial crises. Moreover. stock volatility decreases and stock prices rise before the Fed increases margin requirements. Thus, there is little reason to believe that public policies can control stock volatility. The evidence supports the observation by Black [1976] that stock volatility increases after stock prices fall.

Suggested Citation

  • G. William Schwert, 1989. "Business Cycles, Financial Crises, and Stock Volatility," NBER Working Papers 2957, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:2957
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w2957.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Plosser, Charles I. & Schwert*, G. William, 1978. "Money, income, and sunspots: Measuring economic relationships and the effects of differencing," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 637-660, November.
    2. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1988. "Dividend yields and expected stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-25, October.
    3. French, Kenneth R. & Schwert, G. William & Stambaugh, Robert F., 1987. "Expected stock returns and volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 3-29, September.
    4. Gorton, Gary, 1985. "Bank suspension of convertibility," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 177-193, March.
    5. Neftci, Salih N, 1984. "Are Economic Time Series Asymmetric over the Business Cycle?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(2), pages 307-328, 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. Li, Yuming, 1998. "Expected stock returns, risk premiums and volatilities of economic factors1," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 69-97, June.
    2. Chiang, Thomas C., 2019. "Empirical analysis of intertemporal relations between downside risks and expected returns—Evidence from Asian markets," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 264-278.
    3. Chauvet, Marcelle & Potter, Simon, 2001. "Nonlinear Risk," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(4), pages 621-646, September.
    4. Tai, Chu-Sheng, 2003. "Are Fama-French and momentum factors really priced?," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 13(4-5), pages 359-384, December.
    5. Prat, Georges, 2013. "Equity risk premium and time horizon: What do the U.S. secular data say?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 76-88.
    6. Linnenluecke, Martina K. & Chen, Xiaoyan & Ling, Xin & Smith, Tom & Zhu, Yushu, 2017. "Research in finance: A review of influential publications and a research agenda," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 188-199.
    7. Weidong Tian & Murray Carlson & David A. Chapman & Ron Kaniel & Hong Yan, 2017. "Specification Error, Estimation Risk, and Conditional Portfolio Rules," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 17(2), pages 263-288, June.
    8. Jorgensen, Bjorn & Li, Jing & Sadka, Gil, 2012. "Earnings dispersion and aggregate stock returns," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 1-20.
    9. repec:dgr:rugsom:04e07 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Fernando Rubio, 2005. "Estrategias Cuantitativas De Valor Y Retornos Por Accion De Largo," Finance 0503029, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Christopher J. Neely & David E. Rapach & Jun Tu & Guofu Zhou, 2014. "Forecasting the Equity Risk Premium: The Role of Technical Indicators," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(7), pages 1772-1791, July.
    12. Eric Jacquier & Cedric Okou, 2013. "Disentangling Continuous Volatility from Jumps in Long-Run Risk-Return Relationships," CIRANO Working Papers 2013s-14, CIRANO.
    13. Cem Cakmakli & Dick van Dijk, 2010. "Getting the Most out of Macroeconomic Information for Predicting Stock Returns and Volatility," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 10-115/4, Tinbergen Institute.
    14. Luc Savard, 2010. "Scaling up infrastructure spending in the Philippines: A CGE top-down bottom-up microsimulation approach," International Journal of Microsimulation, International Microsimulation Association, vol. 3(1), pages 43-59.
    15. Yacine AÏT‐SAHALI & Michael W. Brandt, 2001. "Variable Selection for Portfolio Choice," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1297-1351, August.
    16. Ali Naef Mohammad, 2016. "Valuation Tools for Determining the Value of Assets: A Literature Review," International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Accounting, Finance and Management Sciences, vol. 6(4), pages 63-72, October.
    17. Graham, John R. & Harvey, Campbell R., 1996. "Market timing ability and volatility implied in investment newsletters' asset allocation recommendations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 397-421, November.
    18. Amihud, Yakov & Hurvich, Clifford M., 2004. "Predictive Regressions: A Reduced-Bias Estimation Method," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(4), pages 813-841, December.
    19. Harvey, Campbell R., 2001. "The specification of conditional expectations," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 8(5), pages 573-637, December.
    20. King, Mervyn & Sentana, Enrique & Wadhwani, Sushil, 1994. "Volatility and Links between National Stock Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(4), pages 901-933, July.
    21. Santa-Clara, Pedro & Valkanov, Rossen, 2000. "Political Cycles and the Stock Market," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt00n6f3ph, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:2957. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.