Lapm: A Liquidity-Based Asset Pricing Model

Abstract:     
The intertemporal CAPM predicts that an asset's price is equal to the expectation of the product of the asset's payoff and a representative consumer's intertemporal marginal rate of substitution. This paper develops an alternative approach to assest pricing based on corporations' desire to hoard liquidity. Our corporate finance approach suggests new determinants of asset prices such as the distribution of wealth within the corporate sector and between the corporate sector and the consumers. Also, leverage ratios, capital adequacy requirements, and the composition of savings affect the corporate demand for liquid assets and therby interest rates.

This paper first sets up a general model of corporate demand for liquid assets, and obtains an explicit formula for the associated liquidity permia. It then derives some implications of corporate liquidity demand for the equity premium puzzle, for the yield curve, and for the state-contingent volatility of asset prices.

JEL Classifications: G1

Working Paper Series