Macroeconomic Implications of Inequality and Income Risk

We explore the long-run relationship between income risk, inequality, and the macroeconomy in an overlapping-generations model in which households face uncertain streams of labor income and returns on their savings. To manage those risks, households can apportion their savings to a bond, whose return is safe and identical across households, and a productive asset, whose return is uncertain and can differ persistently across households. We find that greater polarization in households’ labor income and returns on their savings generally accentuates households’ demand for risk-free assets and the compensation they require for bearing risk, leading to higher measured income and wealth inequality, a lower risk-free real interest rate, and higher risk premiums. These findings suggest that the factors behind the observed rise in inequality over the past few decades might have contributed to the observed fall in the risk-free real interest rate and widening gap between the risk-free real interest rate and the rate of return on capital. We also find that the magnitude of the decline in the risk-free real interest rate and offsetting rise in risk premiums depend importantly on the source of income polarization, with the effects being especially large when greater inequality is caused by increased dispersion in returns on risky assets. Thus, the macroeconomic implications not only depend on the amount of inequality, but also the source of this inequality.

The Time Variation in Risk Appetite and Uncertainty

We formulate a dynamic no-arbitrage asset pricing model for equities and corporate bonds, featuring time variation in both risk aversion and economic uncertainty. The joint dynamics among cash flows, macroeconomic fundamentals, and risk aversion accommodate both heteroskedasticity and non-Gaussianity. The model delivers measures of risk aversion and uncertainty at the daily frequency. We verify that equity variance risk premiums are very informative about risk aversion, whereas credit spreads and corporate bond volatility are highly correlated with economic uncertainty. Our model-implied risk premiums outperform standard instruments for predicting asset excess returns. Risk aversion is substantially correlated with consumer confidence measures and in early 2020 reacted more strongly to new COVID cases than did an uncertainty proxy. This paper was accepted by Haoxiang Zhu, finance.

Risk Premium Shocks Can Create Inefficient Recessions

We develop a simple flexible-price model of business cycles driven by spikes in risk premiums. Aggregate shocks increase firms’ uninsurable idiosyncratic risk and raise risk premiums. We show that risk shocks can create quantitatively plausible recessions, with contractions in employment, consumption, and investment. Business cycles are inefficient—output, employment, and consumption fall too much during recessions, compared to the constrained-efficient allocation. Optimal policy involves stimulating employment and consumption during recessions.

The determinants of capitalization rates: evidence from the US real estate markets

PurposeEstablishing the strength of a novel variable–mortgage debt as a fraction of US gross domestic product (GDP)–on forecasting capitalization rates in both the US office and multifamily sectors.Design/methodology/approachThe authors specifies a vector error correction model (VECM) to the data. VECM are used to address the nonstationarity issues of financial variables while maintaining the information embedded in the levels of the data, as opposed to their differences. The cap rate series used are from Green Street Advisors and represent transaction cap rates which avoids the problem of artificial smoothness found in appraisal-based cap rates.FindingsUsing a VECM specified with the novel variable, unemployment and past cap rates contains enough information to produce more robust forecasts than the traditional variables (return expectations and risk premiums). The method is robust both in and out of sample.Practical implicationsThis has direct implications for governmental policy, offering a path to real estate price stability and growth through mortgage access–functions largely influenced by the Fed and the quasi-federal agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It also offers a timely alternative to interest rate-based forecasting models, which are likely to be less useful as interest rates are to be held low for the foreseeable future.Originality/valueThis study offers a new and highly explanatory variable to the literature while being among the only to model either (1) transactional cap rates (versus appraisal) (2) out-of-sample data (versus in-sample) (3) without the use of the traditional variables thought to be integral to cap rate modelling (return expectations and risk premiums).

Estimating Fair Market Value of Petroleum Assets in Nigeria: A Risk-Based Approach

Many independent Nigerian oil & gas companies have emerged over the last decade out ofthe divestments of ageing petroleum assets by multinational oil companies. Thesetransactions are marked by pervasive cases of overvaluation and huge gap in offers that leadto unnecessarily high acquisition costs. Petroleum analysts around the world adopt the Discounted Cashflow Analysis method forestimating present value of future oil production revenues. Unfortunately, project economicsusing conventional analysis does not de-risk the reserves components appropriately oraccount for the excess and political risk premiums. Even when analysts derive the NetPresent Value from conventional evaluation, say at discount rates of say 10% or 15%, theyface the dilemma of extracting offer price from that figure. Some post a conservative offerbased on 50% NPV, while others throw in all the NPV in a scheme to win the bid at all cost. Some also start by guesstimating value by rule of thumb and then offer the NPV that is leftbehind. The decision to offer a given percentage of the NPV is entirely subjective and variesamongst investors and as such does not depict a logical perception of market value, or therisks thereof. Furthermore, by omitting political risk, buyers are invariably ignoring the mostcrucial risk of all. The adoption of different bases of reserves tend to compound the problemby yielding NPVs that are few and far between each other. They are usually based on un-risked ‘proved plus probable’ (2P) reserves, which is highly speculative and unrealistic forvaluation. For the first time, the concerns of high purchase price and offer gaps were debuggedleveraging the new Risk-Based Valuation approach which is based on a modified Discounted Cashflow model. A research deeply investigates the problems first by reconstructing originaltransaction to identify the root causes. Furthermore, the study concludes that buyers arepaying on average 4 times the value and that regulating reserves base is fundamental inorder to minimize offer gaps that sometimes tend to a billion dollars for large deals. Thus, the Risk-Based Discounted Cashflow Analysis technique can help prevent overpricing orunderpricing of Nigerian assets, minimize offer gaps in the market as well as account for theimpact of political risks (or its mitigation) in valuation.