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Yield and Growth
Yield and Growth
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JACOB THOMAS
is the Williams Brothers
professor of accounting and
finance at Yale University
in New Haven, CT.
jake.thomas@yale.edu
FRANK ZHANG
is an assistant professor of
accounting at Yale University and a vice president
at Nicholas Applegate
Capital Management
in San Diego, CA.
frank.zhang@yale.edu
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A simple illustration explains why financial economists believe yields should be the same under high and
low inflation. Consider equivalent plots of land that are
rented out in two worlds that are identical in all respects
except that expected inflation is zero in one world and
2% in the other world. If the real required rate of return
on similar investments is 5% in both worlds, the nominal
required rates of return will be 5% and 7% in the zero
and 2% inflation worlds, respectively. Assume that land
values increase with inflation in both worlds. The annual
rents charged in both worlds must then equal 5% of land
value, since the rate of return required by investors equals
total returnsthe sum of the rent and the increase in land
value. Earnings yields, which equal the ratio of annual
rent to land value, would be the same 5% in both worlds.
In effect, investments in real assets are associated with
earnings yields that are real (i.e., yields vary with real
required rates of return because inflationary gains are
excluded from earnings). The same intuition should apply
to equity investments in firms because firms hold real
assets.
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EXHIBIT 1
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Trailing Earnings Yields for the S&P 500 and 10-Year Risk-Free Rates (rf)
Note: Earnings yields from http://aida.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm and risk-free rates from Global Financial Data (=tcm10p/tcm10y before/after March
31, 1953).
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Whereas evidence of co-movement between inflation rates and earnings yields has been noted for many
years, evidence of co-movement between inflation rates
and forecast growth is relatively recent (see Table V of
Claus and Thomas [2001] and Figure 3 of Sharpe [2002]).
Since observed growth is quite volatile, it generates unreliable estimates of anticipated growth. It is only since the
late 1970s that forecast growth can be estimated from
databases covering sell-side analysts forecasts of earnings
per share.
We estimate market-level nominal growth anticipated by the stock market by aggregating firm-level earnings forecasts made by sell-side analysts, available on
I/B/E/S files. To obtain a longer-term estimate of growth,
we aggregate market-level earnings forecasts for years +4
and +5 to compute the implied growth forecast for year +5.
Since sell-side analysts forecasts are known to be optimistic at four- and five-year horizons, we focus not on the
level of growth forecast but on whether those optimistic
growth forecasts vary with expected inflation.
The results in Exhibit 2 suggest that forecast fiveyear-out growth varies remarkably little, between 11%
and 14%, through the 1980s and 1990s. This low level of
variation contrasts sharply with the steep decline in
expected inflation over the period, reflected by risk-free
rates declining from 14% in 1981 to about 4% by the end
of the sample period. Contrary to conventional wisdom,
investors project relatively constant nominal growth rates
(i.e., real growth in earnings is anticipated to be high (low)
when expected inflation is low (high)).
To be sure, these results are consistent with a stock
market that suffers from inflation illusion, that is, investors
and analysts project relatively constant nominal growth
rates when, in fact, they should be projecting constant real
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Equation (2) considers the case of full payout to convert the dividend yield relation in Equation (1) to a relation that describes earnings yields. Since dividends equal
earnings when all earnings are paid out as dividends, forward dividend yields, d1/p0, in Equation (1) can be replaced
by forward earnings yields, e1/p0. However, the dividend
growth term, g, must be replaced by full payout growth,
gfp, the growth in per share dividends that can be sustained
forever if all earnings are paid out as dividends,2
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EXHIBIT 2
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Forecast 5-Year Growth in Earnings, 5-Year-Out Forecast Errors, and 10-Year Risk-Free Rates, 19812007
Note: Forecast growth and actual data are from I/B/E/S for all U.S. firms with forecasts, and risk-free rates are from Global Financial Data (=tcm10y).
e1
= r g fp = (r f + rp ) g fp
p0
(2)
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Since stock prices are forward looking, our focus is on inflation expected over the long-term future, not observed inflation.
Long-term, risk-free yields serve as a proxy for expected inflation
as long as real risk-free rates are relatively constant over time.
2
We eschew the more conventional approach of linking
earnings yields to dividend yields by inserting a payout ratio,
because it assumes that payout ratios and dividend growth, g,
are unrelated. It is easy to show that g depends on the payout
ratio, but that relation is complex and not easily captured by the
dividend growth model.
3
Note that a substantial portion of land that appears on
corporate balance sheets is not purchased land, but land associated with property acquired under capital leases. The absence
of co-movement between earnings yields and inflation predicted for purchased land does not carry over to leased land.
4
A large portion of growth in aggregate earnings is due
to the issuance of new shares (primarily by new firms) and
due to the reinvestment of earnings not paid out as dividends.
Neither source contributes to full payout growth. The only
growth that is relevant here is that due to positive net present
value opportunities that will be harvested in the future, net of
any decline in earnings from projects currently in operation.
While such opportunities may be abundant for certain sectors
or during certain periods, it is hard to conceive of substantial
net growth opportunities for the aggregate market that can
be sustained in perpetuity.
REFERENCES
Asness, C. Fight the Fed Model: The Relationship between
Future Returns and Stock and Bond Market Yields. Journal of
Portfolio Management (Fall 2003), pp. 1124.
Claus, J., and J.K. Thomas. Equity Premia as Low as Three
Percent? Evidence from Analysts Earnings Forecasts for
Domestic and International Stock Markets. Journal of Finance,
Vol. 55, No. 5 (2001), pp. 16291666.
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Ritter, J.R. The Biggest Mistakes We Teach. Journal of Financial Research, 25 (2002), pp. 159168.
Gordon, M. The Investment, Financing, and Valuation of the Corporation. Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1962.
Grossman, S.J., and R.J. Shiller. The Determinants of the Variability of Stock Prices. American Economic Review, 71 (1981),
pp. 222227.
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