STAFF REPORT No. 570 Asset Pricing with Endogenously Uninsurable Tail Risk Revised October 2020 Hengjie Ai University of Minnesota Anmol Bhandari University of Minnesota and Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis DOI: https://doi.org/10.21034/sr.570 Keywords: Equity premium puzzle; Dynamic contracting; Tail risk; Limited Commitment JEL classification: G1, E3 The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis or the Federal Reserve System. Asset Pricing with Endogenously Uninsurable Tail Risk∗ Hengjie Ai and Anmol Bhandari October 3, 2020 This paper studies asset pricing and labor market dynamics when idiosyncratic risk to human capital is not fully insurable. Firms use long-term contracts to provide insurance to workers, but neither side can fully commit; furthermore, owing to costly and unobservable retention effort, worker-firm relationships have endogenous durations. Uninsured tail risk in labor earnings arises as a part of an optimal risk-sharing scheme. In equilibrium, exposure to the tail risk generates higher aggregate risk premia and higher return volatility. Consistent with data, firm-level labor share predicts both future returns and pass-throughs of firm-level shocks to labor compensation. Key words: Equity premium puzzle, dynamic contracting, tail risk, limited commitment ∗Hengjie Ai (
[email protected]) is affiliated with the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota; Anmol Bhandari (
[email protected]) is at the Department of Economics, University of Minnesota.