Chart: Growth and returns  3/7  BIS central bankers' speeches  In the long term, growth in dividends and firms’ cash flows will reflect underlying economic growth. In our analyses, this is clearly evident in global data: internationally, growth in firms’ cash flows and equity returns are correlated with growth in the global economy. Global economic growth in the coming years is expected to be below its historical level. This “pessimism” is partly related to the driving forces behind the low level of the real interest rate. If we use more conservative estimates of future dividend growth as inputs in our models, our estimate of the ERP falls to below 4 percentage points. There is considerable uncertainty around this estimate, and Norges Bank’s projections are based on a more cautious estimate of 3 percentage points. Chart: Equity allocation and expected return The Ministry of Finance has requested the Bank to provide estimates of the expected return on the fund ahead. Expected bond returns are considerably lower than in 2006, while the expected excess return on equities relative to bonds is somewhat higher as expected term premiums are lower. With an equity allocation of 60 percent, our best estimate of average real return is about 2 percent per year over the next ten years. If the equity allocation is increased to 75 percent, the expected real return rises to about 2½ percent.
Since 1900, the world’s equity markets have yielded a total return 120 times higher than the return on short-term government securities, bringing the average ERP to 5.7 percentage points per year.2] If we look at the period from 1970 to 2015, for which we have more complete data, the ERP is even higher. This cannot be explained by company fundamentals such as growth in earnings and dividends in this period, suggesting that market valuation of company profits has changed since 1970. Adjusting for the effect of this re-pricing, the long-term average ERP falls to just below 4 percentage points. Chart: Equity risk premium from different model specifications As we know, past performance is no guarantee of future results. In addition to using historical excess returns, the ERP can also be estimated using more forward-looking models. The most common approach is to estimate the ERP on the basis of current market prices and expected future dividends. We have analysed several different models of this type. On average, these models estimate an expected ERP of just below 6 percentage points. In all the models, the estimate is higher than it was ten years ago. The chart shows that model-based estimates of the ERP are uncertain and can change quickly. The estimates are particularly sensitive to assumptions for dividend growth and the risk-free rate. Growth in firms’ dividends has been particularly strong in the years since the financial crisis.