Learning, Rare Disasters, and Asset Prices

Learning, Rare Disasters, and Asset Prices
Author: Federal Reserve Federal Reserve Board
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 34
Release: 2014-11-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9781503231191

In this study, we examine how learning about disaster risk affects asset pricing in an endowment economy. We extend the literature on rare disasters by allowing for two sources of uncertainty: (1) the lack of historical data results in unknown parameters for the disaster process, and (2) the disaster takes time to unfold and is not directly observable. The model generates time variation in the risk premium through Bayesian updating of agents' beliefs regarding the likelihood and severity of disaster realization. The model accounts for the level and volatility of U.S. equity returns and generates predictability in returns.

Learning, Rare Disasters, and Asset Prices

Learning, Rare Disasters, and Asset Prices
Author: Yang K. Lu
Publisher:
Total Pages: 35
Release: 2016
Genre:
ISBN:

We incorporate joint learning about state and parameter into a consumption-based asset pricing model with rare disasters. Agents are uncertain whether a negative shock signals the onset of a disaster or how much long-term damage a disaster will cause and they update their beliefs over time. The interaction of state and parameter uncertainty increases the total amount of uncertainty and slows learning. Once the two types of uncertainty are both priced in asset prices, their joint effect enables our model to account for the level and volatility of U.S. equity returns without relying on exogenous variation in disaster risk or any realization of disaster shock in the data sample.

Learning with Rare Disasters

Learning with Rare Disasters
Author: Jessica A. Wachter
Publisher:
Total Pages: 64
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN:

Financial crises appear to have long-lasting effects, even after the crisis itself has past. This paper offers a simple explanation through Bayesian learning from rare events. Agents face a latent and time-varying probability of economic disaster. When a disaster occurs, learning results in greater effects on asset prices because agents update their probability of future disasters. Moreover, agents' belief that the disaster risk is high can rationally persist for years, even when it is in fact low. We generalize the model to allow for a noisy signal of the disaster probability. This generalized model explains excess stock market volatility together with negative skewness, effects that previous models in the literature struggle to explain.

Asset Pricing

Asset Pricing
Author: John H. Cochrane
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 560
Release: 2009-04-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1400829135

Winner of the prestigious Paul A. Samuelson Award for scholarly writing on lifelong financial security, John Cochrane's Asset Pricing now appears in a revised edition that unifies and brings the science of asset pricing up to date for advanced students and professionals. Cochrane traces the pricing of all assets back to a single idea--price equals expected discounted payoff--that captures the macro-economic risks underlying each security's value. By using a single, stochastic discount factor rather than a separate set of tricks for each asset class, Cochrane builds a unified account of modern asset pricing. He presents applications to stocks, bonds, and options. Each model--consumption based, CAPM, multifactor, term structure, and option pricing--is derived as a different specification of the discounted factor. The discount factor framework also leads to a state-space geometry for mean-variance frontiers and asset pricing models. It puts payoffs in different states of nature on the axes rather than mean and variance of return, leading to a new and conveniently linear geometrical representation of asset pricing ideas. Cochrane approaches empirical work with the Generalized Method of Moments, which studies sample average prices and discounted payoffs to determine whether price does equal expected discounted payoff. He translates between the discount factor, GMM, and state-space language and the beta, mean-variance, and regression language common in empirical work and earlier theory. The book also includes a review of recent empirical work on return predictability, value and other puzzles in the cross section, and equity premium puzzles and their resolution. Written to be a summary for academics and professionals as well as a textbook, this book condenses and advances recent scholarship in financial economics.

Empirical Asset Pricing with Multi-Period Disasters and Partial Government Defaults

Empirical Asset Pricing with Multi-Period Disasters and Partial Government Defaults
Author: Jantje Sönksen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 49
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:

According to the rare disaster hypothesis, the extraordinary mean excess returns on U.S. equity portfolios during the postwar period resulted because investors ex ante demanded a compensation for possibly disastrous but very unlikely risks that they ex post did not incur. Empirical tests of the rare disaster hypothesis are scarce, and the frequently used assumption that disasters shrink to one-period events is under suspicion of being the driving force behind the hypothesis' success in calibrations. This study proposes a simulation-based approach to estimate an asset pricing model that accounts for multi-period disasters, partial government defaults, and recursive investor preferences. The empirical results corroborate that the rare disaster hypothesis helps to restore the nexus between the real economy and financial markets that is implied by the consumption-based asset pricing paradigm. The estimates of the subjective discount factor, relative risk aversion, and the intertemporal elasticity of substitution are economically reasonable, rather precise, and robust with respect to alternative model specifications. Moreover, the model-implied equity premium, mean T-bill return, and market Sharpe ratio are plausible and consistent with empirical data.

Pricing Climate Change Risks

Pricing Climate Change Risks
Author: Christos Karydas
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN:

There are concerns that climate-related physical and political risks are not yet properly reflected in asset prices. To address these concerns, we develop a dynamic asset pricing framework with rare disasters related to climate change. The novelty of this paper lies in linking carbon emissions and portfolio composition with the stochastically-varying probability of these events. Using theory and simulations we study the implications of the imminent threat of climate change on different market measures and on the participation of carbon-intensive assets in the aggregate portfolio, as well as the conditions that lead to these assets becoming stranded. Our result suggest that climate change implies a positive and increasing risk premium, with the overall equity premium depending on the volatility of the stochastic process that governs climate change risk. Transition risks lower substantially the participation of carbon intensive assets in the market portfolio, which should be fully de-carbonized by the end of the century for the worst IPCC emissions scenario.

The Economic Impacts of Natural Disasters

The Economic Impacts of Natural Disasters
Author: Debarati Guha-Sapir
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2013-05-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199841934

This work combines research and empirical evidence on the economic costs of disasters with theoretical approaches. It provides new insights on how to assess and manage the costs and impacts of disaster prevention, mitigation, recovery and adaption, and much more.