Does the Fiscal Deficit Really Affect Asset Valuations?
December 4, 2007 - Economic Indicators
How do investors respond to the state of the U.S. federal fiscal deficit? In their August 2007 paper entitled “Fiscal Policy and Asset Markets: A Semiparametric Analysis”, Dennis Jansen, Qi Li, Zijun Wang and Jian Yang examine the relationships between U.S. fiscal policy and U.S. asset markets (stocks and bonds). Using monthly data for the S&P 500 index, U.S. corporate bond yield, 10-year Treasury note (T-note) yield, the Federal Funds Rate (FFR), industrial production, the Consumer Price Index and the U.S. government budget deficit over the period July 1954 through December 2005 (618 months), they conclude that: Keep Reading