Conditional Equity Premium and Aggregate Corporate Investment

Abstract

We document a strong negative relation between aggregate corporate investment and conditional equity premium estimated from direct stock market risk measures. Consistent with the investment-based asset pricing model, the comovement with conditional equity premium fully accounts for aggregate investment’s market return predictive power. Similarly, conditional equity premium is a significant determinant of classic Tobin’s q measure, although q has much weaker explanatory power for aggregate investment possibly because of its measurement errors. Moreover, the positive relation between aggregate investment and investor sentiment documented in previous studies reflects the fact that both variables correlate closely with conditional equity premium.

Keywords: Aggregate Corporate Investment, Return on Assets, Aggregate Corporate Profitability, Conditional Equity Premium, Market Variance, Aggregate Idiosyncratic Variance, Tobin’s q, Investor Sentiment, Investment-Based Asset Pricing Model

JEL Classification: G10, G12, G3