This book aims to create a strong understanding of the empirical basis for the equity risk premium. Through the research and anaylsis of two scholars who are experts in this field, this volume presents the key issues that are paramount to investors, including whether or not to use historical data as a method of equity investing, and can the equity premium reflect changes in fundamental values and cash flows of the market.

Das Thema Risikoprämie für Aktien (Equity Risk Premium) wird hier zum ersten Mal verständlich erklärt. Die Risikoprämie für Aktien stellt einen Renditeausgleich dar für das erhöhte Risiko, das ein Anleger bei der Investition in Aktien eingeht, im Vergleich zu einer Investition in risikofreie Staatsanleihen. Die Risikoprämie ist zwar von der Theorie her einfach, jedoch in der Praxis ein sehr komplexes Phänomen. Für Finanzentscheidungen ist es von größter Bedeutung, daß man das Prinzip der Risikoprämie versteht und es anwenden kann. Cornell erläutert das Thema Schritt für Schritt sehr anschaulich und ohne terminologischen Ballast. Zunächst wird die Risikoprämie im Zusammenhang mit der Geschichte des Aktienmarktes betrachtet. Der Haussemarkt der 90er dient dabei als Fallstudie. Cornell zeigt, welche Rückschlüsse man durch die Analyse der Risikoprämie im historischen Verlauf für den Aktienmarkt ziehen kann, z.B. ob Aktienkurse steigen oder fallen oder ob sich der Aktienmarkt verändert. Vorausschauende Schätzungen der Risikoprämie werden anhand verschiedener konkurrierender Modelle analysiert, wobei die Vorzüge der jeweiligen Methode mitbewertet werden. 'Equity Risk Premium' ist das erste Buch, das dieses wichtige Prinzip der Risiko-Nutzen-Analyse erschöpfend behandelt. Es vermittelt einen tiefen Einblick und deckt alle Grundlagen ab, damit Investoren fundierte Finanzentscheidungen treffen können. Ein absolutes Muß für institutionelle Anleger, Geldmanager und Finanzvorstände, die auf eine fundierte Marktanalyse zurückgreifen müssen. (06/99)

A radical, definitive explanation of the link between loss aversion theory, the equity risk premium and stock price, and how to profit from it The Risk Premium Factor presents and proves a radical new theory that explains the stock market, offering a quantitative explanation for all the booms, busts, bubbles, and multiple expansions and contractions of the market we have experienced over the past half-century. Written by Stephen D. Hassett, a corporate development executive, author and specialist in value management, mergers and acquisitions, new venture strategy, development, and execution for high technology, SaaS, web, and mobile businesses, the book convincingly demonstrates that the equity risk premium is proportional to long-term Treasury yields, establishing a connection to loss aversion theory. Explains stock prices from 1960 through the present including the 2008/09 "market meltdown" Shows how the S&P 500 has consistently reverted to values predicted by the model Solves the equity premium puzzle by showing that it is consistent with findings on loss aversion Demonstrates that three factors drive valuation and stock price: earnings, long term growth, and interest rates Understanding the stock market is simple. By grasping the simplicity, business leaders, corporate decision makers, private equity, venture capital, professional, and individual investors will fully understand the system under which they operate, and find themselves empowered to make better decisions managing their businesses and investment portfolios.

This dissertation analyzes business cycles and international asset pricing under disaster risk. In the first chapter, I use annual consumption and financial data for 31 countries over 140 years and I document that developing countries exhibit a more volatile consumption and a significantly larger equity premium. By employing a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach, I estimate an empirical model of macroeconomic disasters - low-probability events with disastrous consequences such as the Great Depression - in developing and high-income countries. I find that developing countries have a higher overall probability of entering a disaster and that they are also much more likely to enter an individual disaster such as a sovereign debt crisis. Disasters in high-income countries are shown to be shorter, on average, but more severe and uncertain. Group heterogeneity in disaster parameters allows me to generate a substantial equity premium for both groups of countries. Disaster contagion plays a vital role in explaining the equity premium puzzle for high-income countries. The model-simulated correlations of equity premium within each group of countries are qualitatively in line with data. The second chapter provides evidence that the U.S. stock market returns not only exhibit large negative skewness, but that they also provide poor payoffs during deep consumption recessions. Using out-of-the-money S&P 500 index options, I obtain a hedged risk premium and show that the hedged risk premium captures the equity risk premium during normal times. I isolate the disaster risk premium as the difference between the total equity risk premium and the hedged risk premium. In addition, I illustrate that the risk premium due to disasters explains about eighty percent of the total equity risk premium. In the cross-section of stock returns, I find that stocks that are more negatively related to the disaster risk premium yield considerably higher subsequent returns. However, this finding is not robust to adjusting for Fama-French price factors. I also find a little predictive power of the disaster risk premium with respect to the aggregate stock market returns due to the lack of autocorrelation in the disaster risk premium. The third chapter recognizes the importance of a large informal economy for business cycles in emerging countries. I show that a two-sector real business cycle model of a small open economy with a poorly measured informal sector, Cobb-Douglas utility function, and country spread fluctuations accounts for the low volatility of hours worked and large relative volatility of consumption to output in emerging countries. Due to the non-separability between consumption and labor supply, the model cannot explain the countercyclical real interest rates and trade balance that prevail in developing countries. The results suggest that GHH preferences are necessary to generate countercyclical real interest rates and trade balance in a neoclassical setting with working capital constraint and exogenous movements in real interest rates.