The Risky Capital of Emerging Markets
52 Pages Posted: 14 Jan 2015
There are 2 versions of this paper
The Risky Capital of Emerging Markets
The Risky Capital of Emerging Markets
Date Written: December 13, 2014
Abstract
Emerging markets exhibit high returns to capital, the ‘Lucas Paradox,’ alongside volatile growth rate regimes. We investigate the role of long-run risks, i.e., risk due to fluctuations in economic growth rates, in leading to return differentials across countries. We take the perspective of a US investor and outline an empirical strategy to identify risky growth shocks and quantify their implications. Long-run risks account for 60-70% of the observed return disparity between the US and a group of the poorest countries. At the individual country level, our model predicts average returns that are highly correlated with those in the data (0.61).
Keywords: Lucas Paradox, emerging markets, returns to capital, long-run risk, asset pricing puzzles
JEL Classification: O4, E22, F21, G12
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation