Is There An Equity Duration Premium?

Abstract

Equity duration is a measure of discount-rate sensitivity that is driven by both, stock-specific cash-flow timing and stock-specific discount-rate levels. Established measures of equity duration using market-price information derive their predictive power for returns from using market-implied discount rates. We introduce new measures of pure cash-flow timing which disentangle discount-rate level from cash-flow timing information. Our results indicate an unconditionally flat relationship between timing and average returns. However, it turns out that in recessions (expansion episodes), there is a negative (positive) relation between cash-flow timing and average stock returns.

Keywords: Equity duration, cash flow timing, term structure of equity, cross-section of expected returns

JEL Classification: G12, G17, G23