← Search

Journal of Banking & Finance Vol. 31 No. 6 2007

Testing for negative expected market return premia

Venkat R. Eleswarapu1; Rex Thompson2

1 Oppenheimer Funds, USA · 2 Southern Methodist University

Abstract

This paper tests the hypothesis that the expected return premium on the market portfolio is always non-negative. A violation of this lower bound restriction provides evidence against a broad class of risk-based equilibrium models in favor of bubble behavior. Our tests utilize information variables, identified in prior literature, that predict time variation in market return premia. We employ out-of-sample forecasts and bootstraps generated with parameters that are consistent with non-negativity but closest to the estimated parameters. We find statistically reliable evidence against non-negativity for the excess return on the value-weighted market index. The most negative out-of-sample prediction was −2.01% in September 1973.

DOI
10.1016/j.jbankfin.2006.08.005
Volume
31
Issue
6
Pages
1755-1770
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

Cite