The Worldwide Equity Premium: A Smaller Puzzle

Abstract

We use a new database of long-run stock, bond, bill, inflation, and currency returns to estimate the equity risk premium for 17 countries and a world index over a 106-year interval. Taking U.S. Treasury bills (government bonds) as the risk-free asset, the annualised equity premium for the world index was 4.7% (4.0%). We report the historical equity premium for each market in local currency and US dollars, and decompose the premium into dividend growth, multiple expansion, the dividend yield, and changes in the real exchange rate. We infer that investors expect a premium on the world index of around 3-3 1/2% on a geometric mean basis, or approximately 4 1/2-5% on an arithmetic basis.

Keywords: Equity risk premium, long run returns, survivor bias, financial history, stocks bonds bills inflation

JEL Classification: G12, G15, G23, G31, N20