A Comprehensive Look at the Empirical Performance of Equity Premium Prediction

Amit Goval and Ivo Welch
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Amit Goyal

No 10483, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Given the historically high equity premium, is it now a good time to invest in the stock market? Economists have suggested a whole range of variables that investors could or should use to predict: dividend price ratios, dividend yields, earnings-price ratios, dividend payout ratios, net issuing ratios, book-market ratios, interest rates (in various guises), and consumption-based macroeconomic ratios (cay). The typical paper reports that the variable predicted well in an *in-sample* regression, implying forecasting ability. Our paper explores the *out-of-sample* performance of these variables, and finds that not a single one would have helped a real-world investor outpredicting the then-prevailing historical equity premium mean. Most would have outright hurt. Therefore, we find that, for all practical purposes, the equity premium has not been predictable, and any belief about whether the stock market is now too high or too low has to be based on theoretical prior, not on the empirically variables we have explored.

JEL-codes: G12 G14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-05
Note: CF AP
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (53)

Published as Ivo Welch & Amit Goyal, 2008. "A Comprehensive Look at The Empirical Performance of Equity Premium Prediction," Review of Financial Studies, Oxford University Press for Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(4), pages 1455-1508, July.

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Related works:
Working Paper: A Comprehensive Look at the Empirical Performance of Equity Premium Prediction II (2021)
Journal Article: A Comprehensive Look at The Empirical Performance of Equity Premium Prediction (2008)
Working Paper: A Comprehensive Look at the Empirical Performance of Equity Premium Prediction (2006)
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