Is the Stock Market Overvalued?

Ellen McGrattan and Edward Prescott

No 8077, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The value of U.S. corporate equities in the first half of 2000 was close to 1.8 times U.S. gross national income. Some stock market analysts have argued that the market is overvalued at this level. We use standard economic theory and find that the market is correctly valued. In theory, the market value of equity plus debt liabilities should equal the value of productive assets plus debt assets. Since the net value of debt is currently low, the market value of equity should be approximately equal to the market value of productive assets. We find that the market value of productive assets is roughly 1.8 GNPs and is therefore in line with the market value of equity.

JEL-codes: E13 G12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-01
Note: AP EFG
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Published as Ellen R. McGrattan & Edward C. Prescott, 2000. "Is the stock market overvalued?," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, issue Fall, pages 20-40.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8077.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Is the stock market overvalued? (2000)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8077

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8077

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().