Stocks, Bonds, and Long-Run Consumption Risks

I evaluate whether the so-called long-run risk framework can jointly explain key features of both equity and bond markets as well as the interaction between asset prices and the macroeconomy. I find that shocks to expected consumption growth and time-varying macroeconomic volatility can account for the level of risk premia and its variation over time in both markets. The results suggest a common set of macroeconomic risk factors operating in equity and bond markets. I estimate the model using a simulation estimator that accounts for time aggregation of consumption growth and utilizes a rich set of moment condition

The Fed-model and the changing correlation of stock and bond returns: An equilibrium approach

This paper presents an equilibrium model that provides a rational explanation for two features of data that have been considered puzzling: The positive relation between US dividend yields and nominal interest rates, often called the Fed-model, and the time-varying correlation of US stock and bond returns. Key ingredients are time-varying first and second moments of consumption growth, inflation, and dividend growth in conjunction with Epstein-Zin and Weil recursive preferences. Historically in the US, inflation has signalled low future consumption growth. The representative agent therefore dislikes positive inflation shocks and demands a positive risk premium for holding assets that are poor inflation hedges, such as equity and nominal bonds. As a result, risk premiums on equity and nominal bonds comove positively through their exposure to macroeconomic volatility. This generates a positive correlation between dividend yields and nominal yields and between stock and bond returns. High levels of macro volatility in the late 1970s and early 1980s caused stock and bond returns to comove strongly. The subsequent moderation in aggregate economic risk has brought correlations lower. The model is able to produce correlations that can switch sign by including the covariances between consumption growth, inflation, and dividend growth as state variables

Economic Momentum and Currency Returns

Past trends in a broad range of fundamental variables predict currency returns. We document that a trading strategy that goes long currencies in countries with strong economic momentum and short currencies in countries with weak economic momen- tum exhibits an annualized Sharpe ratio of about one and yields a significant alpha when controlling for standard carry, momentum, and value strategies. The economic momentum strategy subsumes the alpha of carry trades, suggesting that cross-country di↵erences in carry are captured by di↵erences in past economic trends. Moreover, we study investors’ expectations of fundamental variables and find the expectations to be extrapolative but negatively related to the portfolio weights, which rank economic trends across countries

Stocks, bonds, and long-run consumption risks

I evaluate whether the so-called long-run risk framework can jointly explain key features of both equity and bond markets as well as the interaction between asset prices and the macroeconomy. I find that shocks to expected consumption growth and time-varying macroeconomic volatility can account for the level of risk premia and its variation over time in both markets. The results suggest a common set of macroeconomic risk factors operating in equity and bond markets. I estimate the model using a simulation estimator which accounts for time-aggregation of consumption growth and utilizes a rich set of moment conditions

International Bond Risk Premia

We identify local and global factors across international bond markets that are poorly spanned by the cross-section of yields but have strong forecasting power for future bond excess returns. Local and global factors are jointly signicant predictors of bond returns, where the global factor is closely linked to US bond risk premia and international business cycles. Motivated by our results, we estimate a no-arbitrage ane term structure model for each country in which movements in risk premia are driven by one local and one global factor. Yield loadings for the two factors are estimated to be close to zero while shocks to risk premia account for a small fraction of yield variance. This suggests that the cross-section of yields conveys little information about the return-forecasting factors. We show that shocks to global risk premia cause osetting movements in expected returns and expected future short-term interest rates, leaving current yields little affected. Furthermore, correlations between international bond risk premia have increased over time, indicating an increase in integration between markets