Income Insurance and the Equilibrium Term-Structure of Equity

This paper documents that GDP, wages and dividends are co-integrated but feature term-structures of risk respectively flat, increasing and decreasing. Income insurance within the firm from shareholders to workers explains those term-structures: distributional risk smooths wages and enhances the short-run risk of dividends. A simple general equilibrium model, where labor rigidity affects dividend dynamics and the price of short-run risk, reconciles standard asset pricing facts with the term-structures of equity premium and volatility and those of macroeconomic variables, at odds in leading models. Income insurance also helps to explain dividend growth predictability, cross-sectional value premia, counter-cyclical Sharpe-ratios, and interest rates term-premia.