Long Run Risks and Equity Returns

We argue that investor concerns about the exposure of asset returns to permanent movements in consumption levels are a key determinant of the risk and return relation in asset markets. We show that as the investment horizon increases, (i) the return's systematic risk exposure (consumption beta) almost converges to the long-run relation between dividends and consumption, (ii) return volatility is increasingly dominated by dividend shocks. We find that most of the differences in risk premia, at short and long horizons, is due to the heterogeneity in the exposure to permanent risks in consumption. The long-run cross-sectional relation between risk and return provides a measure of the compensation for permanent risks in consumption. We find that the market compensation for these risks is large relative to that for transitory movements in consumption.