<p>The central puzzles in financial economics commonly include</p><p>violations of the expectations hypotheses, predictability of excess returns, and the levels and volatilities of nominal bond yields, in addition to well-known equity premium and the risk-free rate puzzles.</p><p>Equally surprising is the recent evidence on large moves in asset prices, and the over-pricing of the out-of-the-money index put options relative to standard models. In this work, I argue that the long-run risks type model can successfully explain these features of financial markets. I present robust empirical evidence which supports the main economic channels in the model. Finally, I develop econometric methods to estimate and test the model, and find that it delivers plausible preference and model parameters and provides a good fit to the asset-price and macroeconomic data.</p><p>In the first chapter, which is co-authored with Ravi Bansal, we present a long-run risks based equilibrium model that can quantitatively explain the violations of expectations hypotheses and predictability of returns in bond and currency markets. The key ingredients of the model include a low-frequency predictable component in consumption, time-varying consumption volatility and investor's preferences for early resolution of uncertainty. In this model, varying consumption volatility in the presence of the predictable consumption component leads to appropriate variation in bond yields and the risk premia to provide an explanation for the puzzling violations of the expectations hypothesis. Using domestic and foreign consumption and asset markets data we provide direct empirical support for the economic channels highlighted in the paper.</p><p>In the second chapter, co-authored with Ravi Bansal, we develop a general equilibrium model in which income and dividends are smooth, but asset prices are subject to large moves (jumps). A prominent feature of the model is that the optimal decision of investors to learn the unobserved state triggers large asset-price jumps. We show that the learning choice is critically determined by preference parameters and the conditional volatility of income process. An important prediction of the model is that income volatility predicts future jumps, while the variation in the level of income does not. We find that indeed in the data large moves in returns are predicted by consumption volatility, but not by the changes in the consumption level. In numerical calibrations, we show that the model can quantitatively capture these novel features of the data.</p><p>In the third chapter, I present a long-run risks type model where consumption shocks are Gaussian, and the agent learns about unobserved expected growth from the cross-section of signals. The uncertainty about expected growth (confidence measure), as in the data, is time-varying and subject to jump-like risks. I show that the confidence jump risk channel can quantitatively account for the option price puzzles and large moves in asset prices, without hard-wiring jumps into consumption. Based on two estimation approaches, the model provides a good fit to the option price, confidence measure, returns and consumption data, at the plausible preference and model parameter values.</p> / Dissertation

This dissertation presents three essays on asset pricing and econometrics. The first chapter identifies rare events and long-run risks simultaneously from a rich data set (the Barro-Ursua macroeconomic data set) and evaluates their contributions to asset pricing in a unified framework. The proposed model of rare events and long-run risks is estimated using a Bayesian Markov-chain Monte-Carlo method, and the estimates for the disaster process are closer to the data than those in the previous studies. Major evaluation results in asset pricing include: (1) for the unleveraged annual equity premium, the predicted values are 4.8%, 4.2%, and 1.0%, respectively; (2) for the Sharpe ratio, the values are 0.72, 0.66, and 0.15, respectively. / Economics

Submitted by Diego Brandão (digusmao@hotmail.com) on 2017-01-06T20:29:33Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese - Versao final - Diego Brandao.pdf: 1402061 bytes, checksum: 2a9d03af25fdeae9cb4300343d707aa2 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by GILSON ROCHA MIRANDA (gilson.miranda@fgv.br) on 2017-02-20T13:39:19Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese - Versao final - Diego Brandao.pdf: 1402061 bytes, checksum: 2a9d03af25fdeae9cb4300343d707aa2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-03T12:50:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese - Versao final - Diego Brandao.pdf: 1402061 bytes, checksum: 2a9d03af25fdeae9cb4300343d707aa2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-09-23 / The thesis consists in three articles about the estimation of asset pricing models. The first paper analyses small sample properties of Generalized Empirical Likelihood estimators for the risk aversion parameter in CRRA preferences when the economy is characterized by rare disasters. In the second article, we develop and test a methodology to assess misspeci fied asset pricing models by taking into account the smallest probability distortion necessary to assign correct prices. In the final paper, we estimate an approximate long run risks model using Brazilian data. / Esta tese consiste em três artigos sobre a estimação de modelos de apreçamento de ativos. No primeiro artigo, analisamos as propriedades de amostra pequena dos estimadores da classe Generalized Empirical Likelihood para o coeficiente de aversão ao risco de preferências CRRA quando a economia é suscetível a desastres. No segundo artigo, apresentamos e testamos uma metodologia de avaliação de modelos de apreçamento mal especificados que leva em conta a menor distorção de probabilidade necessária sobre a medida real para que modelo aprece corretamente ativos. No terceiro artigo, estimamos uma versão aproximada do modelo de riscos de longo prazo utilizando dados brasileiros.

[pt] A literatura existente sobre os efeitos da Covid nos retornos das ações concentra-se em mudanças endógenas na tolerância ao risco e na modelagem de eventos raros. Até agora, essas tentativas não foram capazes de corresponder aos dados. Neste artigo, proponho uma abordagem alternativa para explicar os efeitos da Covid nos retornos de ativos em todo o mundo: separar os efeitos de longo prazo dos efeitos de curto prazo. Intuitivamente, os efeitos de longo prazo da Covid incluem disrupções nas cadeias produtivas e padrões educacionais, que, concebivelmente, levarão tempo para serem eliminados. Exatamente como acontece com os choques persistentes dos modelos de risco de longo prazo! Um modelo que permite flutuações de curto prazo e risco de longo prazo mostra que choques persistentes desempenham um papel na explicação dos retornos do mercado de ações e das taxas de câmbio em um período de tempo que começa em Janeiro de 2018 e termina em Novembro de 2021. / [en] The existing literature on the effects of Covid on stock returns focuses on endogenous changes in risk tolerance and on the modeling of rare events. So far, these attempts have not been able to match the data. In this paper, I propose an alternative approach to explaining the Covid effects on stock returns worldwide: disentangling the long-run effects from the short-run effects. Intuitively, Covid s long-run effects include disruptions of supply chains and educational patterns, which, conceivably, will take time to phase out. Exactly as it happens with the persistent shocks of long-run risks models! A model that allows for short-run fluctuations and long-run risk shows that persistent shocks play a role in explaining stock market returns and exchange rates in a time span that starts in January 2018 and ends in November 2021.

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