Chapter 5 - Risk, Return, and the Historical Record 5-1 Copyright ? 2014 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education. CHAPTER 5: RISK, RETURN, AND THE HISTORICAL RECORDPROBLEM SETS 1. The Fisher equation predicts that the nominal rate will equal the equilibrium real rate plus the expected inflation rate. Hence, if the inflation rate increases from 3% to 5% while there is no change in the real rate, then the nominal rate will increase by 2%. On the other hand, it is possible that an increase in the expected inflation rate would be accompanied by a change in the real rate of interest. While it is conceivable that the nominal interest rate could remain constant as the inflation rate increased, implying that the real rate decreased as inflation increased, this is not a likely scenario. 2. If we assume that the distribution of returns remains reasonably stable over the entire history, then a longer sample period (i.e., a larger sample) increases the precision of the estimate of the expected rate of return; this is a consequence of the fact that the standard error decreases as the sample size increases. However, if we assume that the mean of the distribution of returns is changing over time but we are not in a position to determine the nature of this change, then the expected return must be estimated from a more recent part of the historical period. In this scenario, we must determine how far back, historically, to go in selecting the relevant sample. Here, it is likely to be disadvantageous to use the entire data set back to 1880. 3. The true statements are (c) and (e). The explanations follow. ...
