University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Finance Papers Wharton Faculty Research 12-2013 Equity Yields Jules van Binsbergen University of Pennsylvania Wouter Hueskes Ralph Koijen Evert Vrugt Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/fnce_papers Part of the Finance Commons, and the Finance and Financial Management Commons Recommended Citation van Binsbergen, J., Hueskes, W., Koijen, R., & Vrugt, E. (2013). Equity Yields. Journal of Financial Economics, 110 (3), 503-519. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2013.08.017 At the time of publication, author Jules van Binsbergen was affiliated with Stanford University and Tilburg University, The Netherlands. Currently, he is a faculty member at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/fnce_papers/379 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Equity Yields Abstract We study a new data set of dividend futures with maturities up to ten years across three world regions: the US, Europe, and Japan. We use these asset prices to construct equity yields, analogous to bond yields. We decompose the equity yields to obtain a term structure of expected dividend growth rates and a term structure of risk premia, which decomposes the equity risk premium by maturity. We find that the slope of the term structure of risk premia is pro-cyclical, whereas the slope of the term structure of expected dividend growth rates is counter-cyclical. The comovement of yields across regions is, on average, higher for long-maturity yields than for short-maturity yields, whereas the variation in this comovement is much higher for short-maturity yields.