Abstract
A stochastic discount factor for asset returns is recovered from equilibrium marginal rates of transformation inferred from producers' first-order conditions. The marginal rate of transformation implies a novel macro-factor asset pricing model that does a reasonable job explaining the cross-sectional variation in average stock returns with plausible parameter values. Using a flexible representation of firms' production technology, producers' ability to transform output across states of nature is estimated to be high, in contrast with what is typically assumed in standard aggregate representations of firms' production technology.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 146-163 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Journal of Monetary Economics |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 2010 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This paper is based on my Ph.D. thesis at the University of Chicago entitled “A pure production-based asset pricing model”. I am very grateful to the members of my dissertation committee, John Cochrane (Chair), John Heaton, Monika Piazzesi, and Pietro Veronesi for many helpful discussions. I thank participants of several conferences and seminars for suggestions, and to Hui Chen, Bob Goldstein, François Gourio, Nikolai Roussanov, and Maria Ana Vitorino, as well as the editor, Robert King, the associate editor, Urban Jermann, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. All errors are my own.
Keywords
- Cross-sectional asset pricing
- Marginal rate of transformation
- Production under uncertainty
- Production-based asset pricing