CiteULike is a free online bibliography manager. Register and you can start organising your references online.

By Force of Habit: A Consumption-Based Explanation of Aggregate Stock Market Behavior Export

The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 107, No. 2. (1999), pp. 205-251.

Citation Format

[Posts]

View FullText article


jackevans's tags for this article

equitypremium

X Reviews [Write a review of this article]

X Find related articles from these CiteULike users

X Find related articles with these CiteULike tags

X Posting History

X Abstract

We present a consumption-based model that explains a wide variety of dynamic asset pricing phenomena, including the procyclical variation of stock prices, the long-horizon predictability of excess stock returns, and the countercyclical variation of stock market volatility. The model captures much of the history of stock prices from consumption data. It explains the short- and long-run equity premium puzzles despite a low and constant risk-free rate. The results are essentially the same whether we model stocks as a claim to the consumption stream or as a claim to volatile dividends poorly correlated with consumption. The model is driven by an independently and identically distributed consumption growth process and adds a slow-moving external habit to the standard power utility function. These features generate slow countercyclical variation in risk premia. The model posits a fundamentally novel description of risk premia: Investors fear stocks primarily because they do poorly in recessions unrelated to the risks of long-run average consumption growth.


X BibTeX record

X RIS record


Privacy Statement | Terms & Conditions
CiteULike organises scholarly (or academic) papers or literature and provides bibliographic (which means it makes bibliographies) for universities and higher education establishments. It helps undergraduates and postgraduates. People studying for PhDs or in postdoctoral (postdoc) positions. The service is similar in scope to EndNote or RefWorks or any other reference manager like BibTeX, but it is a social bookmarking service for scientists and humanities researchers.