The Equity Premium Puzzle and Myopic Loss Aversion

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The Equity Premium Puzzle and Myopic Loss Aversion Copenhagen Business School M.Sc. Finance & Strategic Management August 2011 The equity premium puzzle and myopic loss aversion An empirical study of a non-standard preference structure in Sweden By Signe Læssøe and Martin Diernisse Advisor: Lisbeth Funding la Cour Department of Economics 120 standard pages / 272,964 characters ”vi er mennesker – hvorfor bebrejde hinanden, at vi ikke er andet” ”we are human - why blame each other that this is all we are” - Gustav Munch-Petersen (Danish poet, 1912-1938) Executive summary In 1985, Mehra & Prescott introduced the so-called equity premium puzzle, which captured that the historic equity premium in the US for the period 1889-1978, could by no means be explained with a traditional asset pricing model, based on expected utility theory. The authors concluded that the discrepancy had to be explained, by investors being much more risk averse than had previously been assumed, or by concluding that the traditional model did not capture actual investor behavior. This thesis investigates an alternative to the standard investor preferences assumed in the model tested by Mehra & Prescott (1985), namely myopic loss aversion as proposed by Benartzi & Thaler (1995). The model is based on prospect theory of Tversky & Kahneman (1979; 1992), as well as established concepts from the field of behavioral finance. It is descriptive in nature, as it is based on experimental studies of human decision making under risk, rather than relying on assumptions of a purely rational individual. First we expand the study of the equity premium puzzle to the small open economy of Sweden, using the original method of Mehra & Prescott (1985), and the statistical reformulation of the puzzle by Kocherlakota (1996). We start by investigating the period 1919-2010, and reach the surprising conclusion that the equity premium puzzle is not present in Sweden for that period. Based on the previous findings of the puzzle, we re-evaluate our period of analysis, and find that the years before 1925 are highly atypical. We thus eliminate the years from our dataset, and for the revised period from 1925-2010 we find an equity premium puzzle similar to the one found in the US. The result is found to be robust against variations in data input, as well as further changes of the sample period. Next, we investigate whether myopic loss aversion is able to serve as a potential solution to the equity premium puzzle in Sweden. We find that the puzzle can be explained by assuming that investors are loss averse, meaning that a loss hurts them twice as much as a gain pleases them, and that they are myopic in their investment strategy, meaning that they on average evaluate their portfolios too often. Our conclusion is supported by observations of optimal asset allocation, and we find that the implied equity premium would fall, if investors were to evaluate the return on their equity investments, in a more aggregated manner. Finally, we test the sensitivity of our method, against different changes in input variables, and over different sample periods, and again we find that our conclusion is robust. Table of Contents 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 5 1.1 Problem statement.............................................................................................................................. 6 1.2 Methodology ....................................................................................................................................... 7 1.2.1 Structure ....................................................................................................................................... 7 1.2.2 Theoretical foundation ................................................................................................................. 8 1.2.3 Delimitations ................................................................................................................................ 8 Part I: The equity premium puzzle 2. The model of Mehra & Prescott .................................................................................................... 10 2.1 Deduction of the model .................................................................................................................... 12 2.2 Empirical findings of Mehra & Prescott ............................................................................................ 15 2.3 Chapter summary .............................................................................................................................. 17 3. Further empirical validation of the puzzle ...................................................................................... 18 3.1 A statistical approach ........................................................................................................................ 18 3.2 The risk-free rate puzzle .................................................................................................................... 20 3.3 The Equity premium puzzle internationally ...................................................................................... 22 3.4 Chapter summary .............................................................................................................................. 25 4. Potential solutions to the puzzle ................................................................................................... 26 4.1 Biases in data ..................................................................................................................................... 26 4.2 Questioning the assumptions behind model .................................................................................... 28 4.2.1 Assumption 1: Markets are complete ........................................................................................ 28 4.2.2 Assumption 2: No trading barriers ............................................................................................. 30 4.2.3 Assumption 3: Standard preference structure ........................................................................... 31 4.3 Chapter summary .............................................................................................................................. 36 1 Part II: Myopic loss aversion 5. The failure of the standard preference structure ........................................................................... 38 5.1 The axioms of expected utility theory ............................................................................................... 38 5.2 Violations of the axioms .................................................................................................................... 39 5.2.1 Certainty effect and probability sizes ......................................................................................... 39 5.2.2 Intransitive preferences ............................................................................................................. 41 5.2.3 Combining risky prospects ......................................................................................................... 42 5.2.4 Gains versus losses ..................................................................................................................... 44 5.3 Chapter summary .............................................................................................................................. 45 6. Prospect Theory ........................................................................................................................... 46 6.1 The Framing Phase ............................................................................................................................ 46 6.2 The Evaluation Phase ........................................................................................................................ 47 6.3 The Value Function ............................................................................................................................ 47 6.4 The Weighting Function, π ................................................................................................................ 52 6.5 The technical functions of prospect theory ...................................................................................... 53 6.6 Chapter summary .............................................................................................................................. 58 7. Myopic Loss Aversion ................................................................................................................... 60 7.1 Loss aversion ..................................................................................................................................... 60 7.2 Mental accounting............................................................................................................................. 62 7.2.1 Choice bracketing ....................................................................................................................... 62 7.3 Combining loss aversion and myopia ................................................................................................ 64 7.4 Chapter summary .............................................................................................................................. 66 8. Myopic loss aversion empirically ................................................................................................... 67 8.1 Myopic
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