REVISION: The Cost of Financial Frictions for Life Insurers
Date Posted: Apr 16, 2013
During the financial crisis, life insurers sold long-term policies at deep discounts relative to actuarial value. In December 2008, the average markup was −19 percent for annuities and −57 percent for universal life insurance. This extraordinary pricing behavior was a consequence of financial frictions and statutory reserve regulation that allowed life insurers to record far less than a dollar of reserve per dollar of future insurance liability. We identify the shadow cost of financial frict
REVISION: Health and Mortality Delta: Assessing the Welfare Cost of Household Insurance Choice
Date Posted: Dec 15, 2012
We develop a pair of risk measures for the universe of health and longevity products that includes life insurance, annuities, and supplemental health insurance. Health delta measures the differential payoff that a product delivers in poor health, while mortality delta measures the differential payoff that a product delivers at death. A life-cycle model of insurance choice simplifies to replicating the optimal health and mortality delta through a portfolio of health and longevity products. For ea
REVISION: The Cross-section of Managerial Ability, Incentives, and Risk Preferences
Date Posted: Oct 16, 2012
I estimate a dynamic investment model for mutual managers to study the cross-sectional distribution of ability, incentives, and risk preferences. The manager's compensation depends on the size of the fund, which fluctuates due to fund returns and due to fund flows that respond to the fund's relative performance. The model provides an economic interpretation of time-varying coefficients in performance regressions in terms of the structural parameters. I document that the estimates of fund alphas
REVISION: The Cross-Section and Time-Series of Stock and Bond Returns
Date Posted: Aug 30, 2012
Value stocks have higher exposure to innovations in the nominal bond risk premium than growth stocks. Since the nominal bond risk premium measures cyclical variation in the market's assessment of future output growth, this results in a value risk premium provided that good news about future output lowers the marginal utility of wealth today. In support of this mechanism, we provide new historical evidence that low return realizations on value minus growth, typically at the start of recessions wh
REVISION: The Cross-Section and Time-Series of Stock and Bond Returns
Date Posted: Aug 30, 2012
Value stocks have higher exposure to innovations in the nominal bond risk premium than growth stocks. Since the nominal bond risk premium measures cyclical variation in the market’s assessment of future output growth, this results in a value risk premium provided that good news about future output lowers the marginal utility of wealth today. In support of this mechanism, we provide new historical evidence that low return realizations on value minus growth, typically at the start of recessions
Update: Equity Yields
Date Posted: Jul 24, 2012
We study a new data set of dividend derivatives with maturities up to 10 years across three world regions: the US, Europe, and Japan. We use these asset prices to construct equity yields, analogous to bond yields. We decompose the equity yields to obtain a term structure of expected dividend growth rates and a term structure of risk premia, which decomposes the equity risk premium by maturity. We find that the slope of the term structure of risk premia is pro-cyclical, whereas the slope of the t
New PDF Uploaded
REVISION: Equity Yields
Date Posted: Mar 15, 2012
We study a new data set of dividend derivatives with maturities up to 10 years across three world regions: the US, Europe, and Japan. We use these asset prices to construct equity yields, analogous to bond yields. We decompose the equity yields to obtain a term structure of expected dividend growth rates and a term structure of risk premia, which decomposes the equity risk premium by maturity. We find that the slope of the term structure of risk premia is pro-cyclical, whereas the slope of the t
New: Judging the Quality of Survey Data by Comparison with 'Truth' as Measured by Administrative Records:
Date Posted: Feb 22, 2012
We construct a new consumption measure as a residual from the budget constraint. Consumption is that part of income that is not used to increase assets. Our measurement relies on detailed Swedish registry data on the various sources of income and the composition of households' asset portfolio, collected as part of the tax assessment process. The richness of the data allow us to impute a household-specific portfolio return, which is important to arrive at an accurate consumption measure with our
REVISION: On the Timing and Pricing of Dividends
Date Posted: Oct 12, 2011
We recover prices of dividend strips on the aggregate stock market using data from derivatives markets. The price of a k-year dividend strip is the present value of the dividend paid in k years. The value of the stock market is the sum of all dividend strip prices across maturities. We study the properties of strips and find that expected returns, Sharpe ratios, and volatilities on short-term strips are higher than on the aggregate stock market, while their CAPM betas are well below one. Short-t
REVISION: On the Timing and Pricing of Dividends
Date Posted: Oct 09, 2011
We recover prices of dividend strips on the aggregate stock market using data from derivatives markets. The price of a k-year dividend strip is the present value of the dividend paid in k years. The value of the stock market is the sum of all dividend strip prices across maturities. We study the properties of strips and find that expected returns, Sharpe ratios, and volatilities on short-term strips are higher than on the aggregate stock market, while their CAPM betas are well below one. Short-t
New: On the Timing and Pricing of Dividends: Web Appendix
Date Posted: Oct 09, 2011
We present evidence on the term structure of the equity premium. We recover prices of dividend strips, which are short-term assets that pay dividends on the stock index every period up to period T and nothing thereafter. It is short-term relative to the index because the index pays dividends in perpetuity. We find that expected returns, Sharpe ratios, and volatilities on short-term assets are higher than on the index, while their CAPM betas are below one. Short-term assets are more volatile than
REVISION: On the Timing and Pricing of Dividends
Date Posted: Apr 02, 2011
We recover prices of dividend strips on the aggregate stock market using data from derivatives markets. The price of a k-year dividend strip is the present value of the dividend paid in k years. The value of the stock market is the sum of all dividend strip prices across maturities. We study the properties of strips and find that expected returns, Sharpe ratios, and volatilities on short-term strips are higher than on the aggregate stock market, while their CAPM betas are well below one. Short-t
REVISION: Likelihood-Based Estimation of Exactly-Solved Present-Value Models
Date Posted: Mar 17, 2011
We develop a tractable exactly solved present-value model to study the dynamics of stock returns, dividend growth rates, and the price-dividend ratio. We show that standard predictive regressions of returns and dividend growth rates on the lagged price-dividend ratio suffer from a problem that is akin to an errors-in-variables problem. By using non-linear filtering techniques to estimate the structural parameters of our present-value model, we can mitigate this errors-in-variables problem. We th
REVISION: Determinants and Consequences of Mortgage Default
Date Posted: Jan 22, 2011
We study a unique data set of borrower-level credit information from TransUnion, one of the three major credit bureaus, which is linked to a database containing detailed information on the borrowers’ mortgages. We find that the updated credit score is an important predictor of mortgage default in addition to the credit score at origination. However, the 6-month change in the credit score also predicts default: A positive change in the credit score significantly reduces the probability of delinqu
REVISION: Determinants and Consequences of Mortgage Default
Date Posted: Jan 21, 2011
We study a unique data set of borrower-level credit information from TransUnion, one of the three major credit bureaus, which is linked to a database containing detailed information on the borrowers' mortgages. We find that the updated credit score is an important predictor of mortgage default. However, the 6-month change in the credit score also predicts default: A positive change in the credit score significantly reduces the probability of delinquency or foreclosure. Next, we analyze the cons
REVISION: Predictability of Returns and Cash Flows
Date Posted: Jan 09, 2011
We review the literature on return and cash flow growth predictability form the perspective of the present-value identity. We focus predominantly on recent work. Our emphasis is on U.S. aggregate stock return predictability, but we also discuss evidence from other asset classes and countries.
REVISION: Determinants and Consequences of Mortgage Default
Date Posted: Oct 29, 2010
We study a unique data set of borrower-level credit information from TransUnion, one of the three major credit bureaus, which is linked to a database containing detailed information on the borrowers' mortgages. We find that the updated credit score is an important predictor of mortgage default. However, the 6-month change in the credit score also predicts default: A positive change in the credit score significantly reduces the probability of delinquency or foreclosure. Next, we analyze the cons
REVISION: Optimal Annuity Risk Management
Date Posted: Sep 03, 2009
We study the optimal consumption and portfolio choice problem over an individual's life-cycle taking into account annuity risk at retirement. Optimally, the investor allocates wealth at retirement to nominal, inflation-linked, and variable annuities and conditions this choice on the state of the economy. We also consider the case in which there are, either for behavioral or institutional reasons, limitations in the types of annuities that are available at retirement. We allow for the possibility
REVISION: Predictive Regressions: A Present-Value Approach
Date Posted: Feb 16, 2009
We propose a latent-variables approach within a present-value model to estimate the expected returns and expected dividend growth rates of the aggregate stock market. This approach aggregates information contained in the whole history of the price-dividend ratio and dividend growth rates to obtain predictors for future returns and dividend growth rates. We find that both returns and dividend growth rates are predictable with R-squared values ranging from 8.2-8.9 percent for returns and 13.9-31.6
REVISION: When Can Life-Cycle Investors Benefit from Time-Varying Bond Risk Premia?
Date Posted: Feb 04, 2009
We study the economic importance of time-varying bond risk premia in a life-cycle consumption and portfolio-choice problem for an investor facing short-sales and borrowing constraints. On average, the investor is able to time bond markets only as of age~45. Tilts in the optimal asset allocation in response to changes in bond risk premia exhibit pronounced life-cycle patterns. Taking as a point of reference an investor who conditions only on age and wealth, we compute the management fee this inv
REVISION: Momentum and Mean-Reversion in Strategic Asset Allocation
Date Posted: Jan 28, 2009
We study a dynamic asset allocation problem in which stock returns exhibit short-run momentum and long-run mean reversion. We develop a tractable continuous-time model that captures these two predictability features and derive the optimal investment strategy in closed-form. The model predicts negative hedging demands for medium-term investors, and an allocation to stocks that is non-monotonic in the investor's horizon. Momentum substantially increases the economic value of hedging time-variation
New: Mortgage Timing
Date Posted: Dec 23, 2008
We study how the term structure of interest rates relates to mortgage choice, both at the household and the aggregate level. A simple utility framework of mortgage choice points to the long-term bond risk premium as theoretical determinant: when the bond risk premium is high, fixed-rate mortgage payments are high, making adjustable-rate mortgages more attractive. This long-term bond risk premium is markedly different from other term structure variables that have been proposed, including the yi
New: Mortgage Timing
Date Posted: Oct 30, 2007
The fraction of newly-originated mortgages that are of the adjustable-rate (ARM) versus the fixed-rate (FRM) type exhibits a surprising amount of time variation. A simple utility framework of mortgage choice points to the bond risk premium as theoretical determinant: when the bond risk premium is high, FRM payments are high, making ARMs more attractive. We confirm empirically that the bulk of the time variation in household mortgage choice can be explained by time variation in the bond risk prem
REVISION: Appendix Describing the Numerical Method Used in 'When Can Life-Cycle Investors Benefit from Time-Va
Date Posted: Aug 10, 2007
We rigorously explain the numerical approach used in the above-mentioned paper. The methodology is based on Brandt, Goyal, Santa-Clara, and Stroud (2005) (Review of Financial Studies) and Carroll (2006) (Economics Letters). In addition to combining these numerical techniques, we suggest two extensions. First, the approach of Brandt, Goyal, Santa-Clara, and Stroud (2005) approximates the conditional expectations encountered in optimizing the utility function via polynomial expansions in the state
REVISION: Optimal Decentralized Investment Management
Date Posted: Feb 07, 2007
We study an institutional investment problem in which a centralized decision maker, the Chief Investment Officer (CIO), for example, employs multiple asset managers to implement and execute investment strategies in separate asset classes. The CIO allocates capital to the managers who, in turn, allocate these funds to the assets in their asset class. This two-step investment process causes several misalignments of objectives between the CIO and his managers and can lead to large utility costs on
New: Optimal Decentralized Investment Management
Date Posted: May 18, 2006
We study a decentralized investment problem in which a CIO employs multiple asset managers to implement and execute investment strategies in separate asset classes. The CIO allocates capital to the managers who, in turn, allocate these funds to the assets in their asset class. This two-step investment process causes several misalignments of objectives between the CIO and his managers and can lead to large utility costs on the part of the CIO. We focus on i) loss of diversification ii) different