Aims to create an understanding of the empirical basis for the equity risk premium. This volume presents the key issues that are paramount to investors, including whether or not to use historical data as a method of equity investing, and can the equity premium reflect changes in fundamental values and cash flows of the market.

What is the return to investing in the stock market? Can we predict future stock market returns? How have equities performed over the last two centuries? The authors in this volume are among the leading researchers in the study of these questions. This book draws upon their research on the stock market over the past two dozen years. It contains their major research articles on the equity risk premium and new contributions on measuring, forecasting, and timing stock market returns, together with new interpretive essays that explore critical issues and new research on the topic of stock market investing. This book is aimed at all readers interested in understanding the empirical basis for the equity risk premium. Through the analysis and interpretation of two scholars whose research contributions have been key factors in the modern debate over stock market perfomance, this volume engages the reader in many of the key issues of importance to investors. How large is the premium? Is history a reliable guide to predict future equity returns? Does the equity and cash flows of the market? Are global equity markets different from those in the United States? Do emerging markets offer higher or lower equity risk premia? The authors use the historical performance of the world's stock markets to address these issues.

William Goetzmann and Roger Ibbotson have produced a searching and comprehensive analysis of how history reveals the forces that shape risk and return in the stock market. But HURRAH! their work is also eminently readable. All investors, economic historians, and financial academics should read this book--and hurry up about it.