Monetary Policy Uncertainty and the Stock Market

Massimo Massa and Alberto Locarno ()

No 4828, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We study the relationship between inflation and stock returns focusing on the signalling content of inflation. Investors use inflation to learn about the stance of the monetary policy. Depending on investors? beliefs, a change in consumption prices has different effects on the risk premium. A change in consumption prices that confirms investors' beliefs reduces stock risk premia, while a change that contradicts them increases risk premia. This may generate a negative correlation between returns and inflation that explains the Fisher puzzle. We model this intuition and test its implication on US data. We construct a market-based proxy of monetary policy uncertainty, we show that it is priced and that, by conditioning on it, the Fisher puzzle disappears.

Keywords: Monetary policy uncertainty; Asset pricing; Learning risk; Risk factors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G11 G12 G14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-fin, nep-fmk, nep-mac, nep-mon and nep-rmg
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