Predictive regressions

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. We propose a latent variables approach within a present-value model to estimate the expected returns and expected dividend growth rates of the aggregate stock market. This approach aggregates information contained in the history of price-dividend ratios and dividend growth rates to predict future returns and dividend growth rates. We find that returns and dividend growth rates are predictable with R-squared values ranging from 8.2% to 8.9% for returns and 13.9% to 31.6% for dividend growth rates. Both expected returns and expected dividend growth rates have a persistent component, but expected returns are more persistent than expected dividend growth rates"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.