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.

Rare Disasters, Asset Prices, and Welfare Costs

Rare Disasters, Asset Prices, and Welfare Costs
Author: Robert J. Barro
Publisher:
Total Pages: 42
Release: 2007
Genre: Assets (Accounting)
ISBN:

A representative-consumer model with Epstein-Zin-Weil preferences and i.i.d. shocks, including rare disasters, accords with key asset-pricing observations. If the coefficient of relative risk aversion equals 3-4, the model accords with observed equity premia and risk-free real interest rates. If the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is greater than one, an increase in uncertainty lowers the price-dividend ratio for equity, whereas a rise in the expected growth rate raises this ratio. In a model with endogenous saving, more uncertainty lowers the saving ratio (because substitution effects dominate). The match with major features of asset pricing suggests that the model is a reasonable candidate for assessing the welfare cost of aggregate consumption uncertainty. In the baseline simulation, the welfare cost of disaster risk is large -- society would be willing to lower real GDP by as much as 20% each year to eliminate the small chance of major economic collapses. The welfare cost from usual economic fluctuations is much smaller, though still important, corresponding to lowering GDP by around 1.5% each year.

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.

Consumption-Based Asset Pricing with Rare Disaster Risk - A Simulated Method of Moments Approach

Consumption-Based Asset Pricing with Rare Disaster Risk - A Simulated Method of Moments Approach
Author: Joachim Grammig
Publisher:
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2018
Genre:
ISBN:

We propose a simulated method of moments strategy to estimate a consumption-based asset pricing model (CBM) that accounts for the possibility of severe economic contractions, thereby providing a test of the rare disaster hypothesis and a re-evaluation of the empirical performance of the canonical CBM. Unlike in previous studies, the estimates of the investor preference parameters and the model-implied equity premium, mean risk-free rate, and market Sharpe ratio are economically plausible and precise. Accounting for rare disasters thus helps to restore the nexus between financial markets and the real economy that is implied by the CBM.

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.

Consumption-based Asset Pricing with Rare Disaster Risk

Consumption-based Asset Pricing with Rare Disaster Risk
Author: Joachim Grammig
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2014
Genre:
ISBN:

The rare disaster hypothesis suggests that the extraordinarily high postwar U.S. equity premium resulted because investors ex ante demanded compensation for unlikely but calamitous risks that they happened not to incur. Although convincing in theory, empirical tests of the rare disaster explanation are scarce. We estimate a disaster-including consumption-based asset pricing model (CBM) using a combination of the simulated method of moments and bootstrapping. We consider several methodological alternatives that differ in the moment matches and the way to account for disasters in the simulated consumption growth and return series. Whichever specification is used, the estimated preference parameters are of an economically plausible size, and the estimation precision is much higher than in previous studies that use the canonical CBM. Our results thus provide empirical support for the rare disaster hypothesis, and help reconcile the nexus between real economy and financial markets implied by the consumption-based asset pricing paradigm.

Disaster Risk and Its Implications for Asset Pricing

Disaster Risk and Its Implications for Asset Pricing
Author: Jerry Tsai
Publisher:
Total Pages: 60
Release: 2015
Genre: Assets (Accounting)
ISBN:

After laying dormant for more than two decades, the rare disaster framework has emerged as a leading contender to explain facts about the aggregate market, interest rates, and financial derivatives. In this paper we survey recent models of disaster risk that provide explanations for the equity premium puzzle, the volatility puzzle, return predictability and other features of the aggregate stock market. We show how these models can also explain violations of the expectations hypothesis in bond pricing, and the implied volatility skew in option pricing. We review both modeling techniques and results and consider both endowment and production economies. We show that these models provide a parsimonious and unifying framework for understanding puzzles in asset pricing.