Long-Run Stockholder Consumption Risk and Asset Returns

We provide new evidence on the success of long-run risks in asset pricing by focusing on the risks borne by "stockholders". Exploiting microlevel household consumption data, we show that long-run stockholder consumption risk better captures cross-sectional variation in average asset returns than aggregate or nonstockholder consumption risk, and implies more plausible risk aversion estimates. We find that risk aversion around 10 can match observed risk premia for the wealthiest stockholders across sets of test assets that include the 25 Fama and French portfolios, the market portfolio, bond portfolios, and the entire cross-section of stocks. Copyright (c) 2009 the American Finance Association.