Recent evidence suggests that global equity markets are becoming more risky. We find that much of the apparent increase in international variance and covariance of returns can be attributed to systematic variations in global risk premia correlated across markets, rather than to any fundamental change in the risk attributes of these markets. This result has interest both for practitioners and for those interested in modeling global asset prices.

Implementing unconditional as well as conditional beta pricing models, the author identifies global economic factors that affect the performance of international investments.

What is the return to investing in the stock market? Can we predict future stock market returns? How have equities performed over the last two centuries? The authors in this volume are among the leading researchers in the study of these questions. This book draws upon their research on the stock market over the past two dozen years. It contains their major research articles on the equity risk premium and new contributions on measuring, forecasting, and timing stock market returns, together with new interpretive essays that explore critical issues and new research on the topic of stock market investing. This book is aimed at all readers interested in understanding the empirical basis for the equity risk premium. Through the analysis and interpretation of two scholars whose research contributions have been key factors in the modern debate over stock market perfomance, this volume engages the reader in many of the key issues of importance to investors. How large is the premium? Is history a reliable guide to predict future equity returns? Does the equity and cash flows of the market? Are global equity markets different from those in the United States? Do emerging markets offer higher or lower equity risk premia? The authors use the historical performance of the world's stock markets to address these issues.

The recent collapse of the stock market has refocused attention on the question of the equity risk premium. One of the most comprehensive studies of the equity premium, completed by Fama and French in 2000, is now significantly out of date and requires refreshing. This article provides that update. We find that various procedures for estimating the premium from historical data are now converging to an annual equity premium over short-term commercial paper on the order of four percent.

The equity risk premium arises from the link between equities as an asset, and corporate profitability and growth. In this paper, we review the concept and measurement of the equity risk premium against a background of recent practitioner debate concerning the suitability of equities for long-term institutional investors. We consider the competing versions of the equity risk premium that are quoted by academics and practitioners, highlight issues of estimation and consider how they can be addressed robustly.We conclude that equities as an asset class offer a robust return premium over long-dated bonds of the order of 2.5% to 3% per annum globally. This is an estimate which adjusts for the experienced changes in market valuations, and is based on detailed empirical analysis of many equity markets over more than 100 years. Diversified exposure to a basket of global equity markets is most likely to deliver this estimated risk premium over time, rather than a concentrated single-country portfolio.Against the same background, we also revisit the debate over time-diversification i.e. the term-structure of the volatility of asset classes with investment horizon. We conclude that the mean-reversion in equity market valuations drives that of equity returns and this mean-reversion directly ensures that the volatility of equities decreases with longer investor time horizons. Hence, in practice, the 'shortfall' risk of equities is less serious than often thought by investors and especially compared with other assets such as bonds when investing for the long-term i.e. over full business or economic cycles.

Research into the equity risk premium, often considered the most important number in finance, falls into three broad groupings. First, researchers have measured the margin by which equity total returns have exceeded fixed-income or cash returns over long historical periods and have projected this measure of the equity risk premium into the future. Second, the dividend discount model—or a variant of it, such as an earnings discount model—is used to estimate the future return on an equity index, and the fixed-income or cash yield is then subtracted to arrive at an equity risk premium expectation or forecast. Third, academics have used macroeconomic techniques to estimate what premium investors might rationally require for taking the risk of equities. Current thinking emphasizes the second, or dividend discount, approach and projects an equity risk premium centered on 3½% to 4%.