Abstract We show that in a general equilibrium model with heterogeneity in risk aversion or belief, shifting wealth from an agent who holds comparatively fewer stocks to one who holds more reduces the equity premium. From an empirical view, the rich hold more stocks, so inequality should predict excess stock market returns. Consistent with our theory, we find that when the U.S. top (e.g., 1%) income share rises, subsequent 1-year excess market returns significantly decline. This negative relation is robust to controlling for classic return predictors, predicting out-of-sample, and instrumenting inequality with estate tax rate changes. It also holds in international markets. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

We provide evidence suggesting that the cross-sectional distributions of US consumption and its growth rate obey the power law in both the upper and lower tails, with exponents approximately equal to four. Consequently, high-order moments are unlikely to exist, and the generalized method of moments estimation of Euler equations that employs cross-sectional moments may be inconsistent. Through bootstrap studies, we find that the power law appears to generate spurious nonrejection of heterogeneous-agent asset pricing models in explaining the equity premium. Dividing households into age groups, we propose an estimation approach that appears less susceptible to fat tail issues.