This paper is an empirical research of the equity premium puzzle in the korean market. Mehra and Prescott(1985) find the their simulated equity premium can not match the real observed equity premium of 6.12% when a Lucas(1978) type representative agen...
This paper is an empirical research of the equity premium puzzle in the korean market. Mehra and Prescott(1985) find the their simulated equity premium can not match the real observed equity premium of 6.12% when a Lucas(1978) type representative agent model is considered and a time and state-separable utility function is used. And the traditional asset pricing model meets its new challenge solve the equity premium puzzle. The puzzle underscored the inability of the standard paradigm of Economics and Finance to explain the magnitude of the risk premium, that is the return earned by a risky asset in excess of the return to a relatively riskless asset. Various research approaches that have been proposed to enhance the model's realism are detailed. But the majority of the proposed resolutions fail along crucial dimensions. Some most resent findings provide a new prospective on explaining the puzzles. Fama and French(2002) uses historical dividends yields and other fundamental information to calculate estimates of the ex post equity premium. Fama and French document that equity returns over the past 50 years have been higher than their expected values. The paper summarizes the historical experience for the USA, other industrialized countries, and korean market and details the intuition behind the discrepancy between model prediction and empirical data in the korean market.
I use annual data-KOSPI index, CD, riskless rate from the KIS-SMAT database and the korean bank database for 1980 through 2004. The estimates of the equity premium is form 1.40 percent to 5.32 percent. The average real return on the KOSPI index(a proxy for the risky asset) is 8.51 percent and the average real return on CD(a proxy for the riskless interest rate) is 7.11 percent. The estimates of the dividend growth model is 11.47 percent. So, the korean stock price is underestimated and the equity premium puzzle existed.