Customer Reviews

The Equity Risk Premium: Essays and Explorations

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First of all, this book is for academics and professionals interested in equity risk premium research that is backed by solid data. It is NOT for the lay person interested in stock investing.

I was greatly anticipating this book from Amazon, but upon initial inspection, I was sadly disappointed. The entire book is a collection of previously published journal articles. There are no new articles for this book. I found only one 2006 article, and two 2002-2003 articles. The original copyright dates are broadly distributed across 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, and early 2000. It could be a good value as a reference/compendium book with important articles from the past. But if you have already read the older articles (or other equivalent articles on the same subject), then it is a waste of money at $55. It includes an excerpt from the Ibbotson's "Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation" handbook, 1976-2000 (the full version sells for $100 and is updated annually). This may have some value, but it might be cheaper to get the original articles from the Journal of Business. Most large community libraries do carry the Journal of Business, so you can read it for free even if you are not currently affiliated with a university.

I have not decided whether to return it to Amazon. I may update my review after reading some of the articles. Roger Ibbotson is a founder at Ibbotson Research, the leading firm on the subject of equity risk premium. This book just proves that there is an extreme scarcity of recent research on this subject. I hope some bright PhD at Chicago or Berkeley will update this study.