NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES THE EQUITY PREMIUM IN RETROSPECT Rajnish Mehra Edward C.Prescott Working Paper 9525 http://www.nber.org/papers/w9525 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge,MA 02138 February 2003 Forthcoming in the Handbook of the Economics of Finance,edited by G.M Contantinides,M.Harris and R. Stulz,North Holland,Amsterdam.We thank George Constantinides,John Donaldson,Ellen R.McGrattan and Mark Rubinstein for helpful discussions.Mehra acknowledges financial support from the Academic Senate of the University of California.Prescott acknowledges financial support from the National Science Foundation.The views expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the National Bureau of Economic Research. 2003 by Rajnish Mehra and Edward C.Prescott.All rights reserved.Short sections of text not to exceed two paragraphs,may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit including Onotice,is given to the source.NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES THE EQUITY PREMIUM IN RETROSPECT Rajnish Mehra Edward C. Prescott Working Paper 9525 http://www.nber.org/papers/w9525 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 February 2003 Forthcoming in the Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edited by G.M Contantinides, M. Harris and R. Stulz, North Holland, Amsterdam. We thank George Constantinides, John Donaldson, Ellen R. McGrattan and Mark Rubinstein for helpful discussions. Mehra acknowledges financial support from the Academic Senate of the University of California. Prescott acknowledges financial support from the National Science Foundation. The views expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the National Bureau of Economic Research. ©2003 by Rajnish Mehra and Edward C. Prescott. All rights reserved. Short sections of text not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit including ©notice, is given to the source