We investigate lead-lag relationships among country stock returns and identify a leading role for the United States: lagged U.S. returns significantly predict returns in numerous non-U.S. industrialized countries (after controlling for national economic variables and countries' own lagged...

While a host of economic variables have been identified in the literature with the apparent in-sample ability to predict the equity premium, Goyal and Welch (2008) find that these variables fail to deliver consistent out-of-sample forecasting gains relative to the historical average. Arguing...

We present significant evidence of out-of-sample equity premium predictability for a host of industrialized countries over the postwar period. There are important differences, however, in the nature of equity premium predictability between the United States and other developed countries. Taken...