Abstract

This study is set up to assess the dynamic effects of business confidence and consumer confidence on stock market risk premiums and to determine the relative importance of business confidence and consumer confidence in forecasting the variability of stock market risk premiums though a variance decomposition. The results show that the response of stock market risk premiums becomes positive immediately following the shocks to business confidence and consumer confidence. Based on the variance decomposition analysis, the variability of stock market risk premiums is 95% due to its own shock and the rest is due to the shocks to business confidence (1%) and consumer confidence (4%) for the 3-month horizon. For the 6-month horizon, the variability of stock market risk premiums is 93% due to its own shock, 2% due to business confidence shock and 5% due to consumer confidence shock. The forecast error of stock market risk premiums is 90% due to its own shock and the rest is due to the shocks to business confidence (4%) and consumer confidence (6%) for the 12-month horizon. The results from the OLS time-series regression show that business confidence and consumer confidence jointly explain around 7.42% of the variation of stock market risk premiums.

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