Disappointment aversion as a solution to the equity premium and the risk-free rate puzzles

In this paper, we match both the first and the second moments of the equity premium and the risk-free rate by endowing the agents in the economy with disappointment aversion preferences and by making the joint process of consumption and dividends follow a Hamilton's (1989) Markov switching model. The interesting feature about the model proposed in this paper is that we need both disappointment aversion and a Markov switching endowment to match the first and second moments of both real and excess returns. With disappointment averse agents but a joint random walk for consumption and dividend growth rates, the average equity premium produced by the model is in the order of 2.5% compared with 5.3% in our sample. With isoelastic preferences but a bivariate three-state Markov switching model for consumption and dividend growth rates, the equity premium is 1.7% for a coefficient of relative risk aversion of 8 and a discount factor of 0.98, while the standard deviations for both the equity premium and the risk-free rate are close to the observed ones. The mean of the risk-free rate stands however very high at 13%. For a disappointment averse consumer, who weights more bad outcomes than good ones (where bad and good are defined with reference to a certainty equivalent measure of a gamble), it is precisely the existence of a bad state that lowers the equilibrium risk-free rate and increases the mean stock return, thereby producing the desired equity premium. Dans le présent article, nous reproduisons les premier et deuxième moments de la prime de risque sur les actions et du taux de risque en dotant les agents dans notre économie de préférences exhibant de l'averison pour la déception et en adoptant un modèle à changements de régime markoviens (Hamilton (1989)) pour le processus conjoint de la consommation et des dividendes. Le modèle proposé a la particularité intéressante de devoir combiner l'aversion pour la déception et une dotation à changements de régime markoviens pour(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)