Reconciling Increasing Wealth Inequality with Increasing Market Participation and a Decreasing Equity Premium

Over the last 30 years stock market participation has increased and the equity premium has declined, this would presumably lead to a decrease in wealth inequality. However, just the opposite has happened as wealth inequality has increased. I propose a general equilibrium model which can both resolve the equity premium puzzle and reproduce the high inequality of wealth seen in the data. I use this model to show that increasing wage inequality can reconcile the initially incompatible observations above. I also use the model to show that changes in age demographics may be responsible for a significant fraction of the decreasing equity premium

Reconciling Increasing Wealth Inequality with Increasing Market Participation and a Decreasing Equity Premium

Over the last 30 years stock market participation has increased and the equity premium has declined, this would presumably lead to a decrease in wealth inequality. However, just the opposite has happened as wealth inequality has increased. I propose a general equilibrium model which can both resolve the equity premium puzzle and reproduce the high inequality of wealth seen in the data. I use this model to show that increasing wage inequality can reconcile the initially incompatible observations above. I also use the model to show that changes in age demographics may be responsible for a significant fraction of the decreasing equity premium

An estimation of economic models with recursive preferences

This paper presents estimates of key preference parameters of the Epstein and Zin (1989, 1991) and Weil (1989) recursive utility model, evaluates the model's ability to fit asset return data relative to other asset pricing models, and investigates the implications of such estimates for the unobservable aggregate wealth return. Our empirical results indicate that the estimated relative risk aversion parameter ranges from 17 to 60, with higher values for aggregate consumption than for stockholder consumption, while the estimated elasticity of intertemporal substitution is above 1. In addition, the estimated model-implied aggregate wealth return is found to be weakly correlated with the Center for Research in Security Prices value-weighted stock market return, suggesting that the return to human wealth is negatively correlated with the aggregate stock market return

An Estimation of Economic Models with Recursive Preferences

This paper presents estimates of key preference parameters of the Epstein and Zin (1989, 1991) and Weil (1989) (EZW) recursive utility model, evaluates the model's ability to fit asset return data relative to other asset pricing models, and investigates the implications of such estimates for the unobservable aggregate wealth return. Our empirical results indicate that the estimated relative risk aversion parameter ranges from 17-60, with higher values for aggregate consumption than for stockholder consumption, while the estimated elasticity of intertemporal substitution is above one. In addition, the estimated model-implied aggregate wealth return is found to be weakly correlated with the CRSP value-weighted stock market return, suggesting that the return to human wealth is negatively correlated with the aggregate stock market return.

The Macroeconomic Effects of Housing Wealth, Housing Finance, and Limited Risk-Sharing in General Equilibrium

This paper studies the role of time-varying risk premia as a channel for generating and propagating fluctuations in housing markets, aggregate quantities, and consumption and wealth heterogeneity. We study a two-sector general equilibrium model of housing and non-housing production where heterogeneous households face limited opportunities to insure against aggregate and idiosyncratic risks. The model generates large variability in the national house price-rent ratio, both because it fluctuates endogenously with the state of the economy and because it rises in response to a relaxation of credit constraints and decline in housing transaction costs (financial market liberalization). These factors, together with a rise in foreign ownership of U.S. debt calibrated to match the actual increase over the period 2000-2006, generate fluctuations in the model price-rent ratio that explains a large fraction of the increase in the national price-rent ratio observed in U.S. data over this period. The model also predicts a sharp decline in home prices starting in 2007, driven by the economic contraction and by a presumed reversal of the financial market liberalization. Fluctuations in the model's price-rent ratio are driven by changing risk premia, which fluctuate endogenously in response to cyclical shocks, the financial market liberalization, and its subsequent reversal. By contrast, we show that the inflow of foreign money into domestic bond markets plays a small role in driving home prices, despite its large depressing influence on interest rates. Finally, the model implies that procyclical increases in equilibrium price-rent ratios reflect rational expectations of lower future housing returns, not higher future rents.

Inequality, stock market participation, and the equity premium

Over the last 25 years, labor income inequality has increased significantly; one may expect this would lead to significant increases in wealth and consumption inequality. However the increase in wealth inequality has been relatively moderate and consumption inequality has barely increased at all. At the same time, stock market participation has increased and the equity premium has declined. I solve a general equilibrium model to show that there is an intimate link between market participation and inequality. When wage inequality increases without a change to participation costs, the model predicts large increases in wealth and consumption inequality and a drop in market participation. However, if in addition, partici- pation costs fall to match the increase in participation observed in the data, the model predicts changes in wealth and consumption inequality quantitatively similar to those observed in the data, as well as a large decline in the equity premium