Predictive Power of Dividend Yields and Interest Rates for Stock Returns in South Asia: Evidence from a Bias-Corrected Estimator

Predictive models of stock returns are often criticized for generating spurious predictability, unstable predictive relationship, and poor out-of-sample forecasting performance. This paper addresses these issues in the context of four major South Asian equity markets. We provide a bias corrected estimate of the relationship of future stock returns to dividend yield and interest rate. We use a restricted vector autoregressive model, draw statistical inferences from a wild-bootstrap method with superior size and power properties, and allow model parameters to vary over time. Dividend yield is a significant predictor in both in- and out-of-sample (OOS) in two countries, while interest rate exhibits significant predictability in all four markets. Imposing theoretically motivated restrictions on model parameters appears to improve OOS predictability. Finally, time variation in return predictability is found to be linked to countercyclical risk premium and persistence of the predictor variables.