About

Andrew G. Atkeson is the Stanley M. Zimmerman Professor of Economics and Finance at UCLA Anderson. His research spans a variety of topics in macroeconomics, including the sustainability of international debt, the design of monetary policy, and the measurement of firm solvency. He has published in prominent academic journals such as the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Throughout his career, he has been awarded nine NSF grants and has served as an Associate Editor for several leading economic journals, including the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Computer Security
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Statistics
• Medicine
• Econometrics
• Finance
• Business
• Mathematics
• Economics
• Law
• Demography
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Why People Disagree About What Drives Stock Prices

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2026-03-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We show that, to a first-order approximation, estimates of fluctuations in Shiller's fundamental price relative to observed price depend primarily on forecasts of long-horizon expected returns.Researchers using different measures of cash flow and valuation may reach different conclusions about the extent to which values fluctuate excessively relative to fundamentals, but that is only because return forecasts based on different cash-flow-to-value measures will be different.Using U.S. equity data, we demonstrate that the amount of persistence in expected returns, rather than the amount of short-run return predictability, is the key determinant of implied excess volatility.Disagreements about stock market valuation therefore reduce to disagreements about long-run expected returns.

  PublisherDOI

• Why People Disagree About What Drives Stock Prices

  2026-02-25

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A Macroeconomic Perspective on Stock Market Valuation Ratios

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2026-01-01

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Traditional valuation metrics for the U.S. stock market based on a comparison of the aggregate market value of U.S. corporations to measures of dividends, earnings, output, and the replacement cost of measured capital have been above historical norms for the past 25-30 years.Will they return to their historical means?We use macroeconomic data to argue that the observed decline in labor's share of corporate output in conjunction with relatively weak corporate investment mechanically generates a persistent rise in the ratio of corporate valuation relative to corporate earnings, even absent any changes in expected returns or growth rates.

  PublisherDOI

• A Macroeconomic Perspective on Stock Market Valuation Ratios

  2026-01-30

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A Macroeconomic Perspective on Stock Market Valuation Ratios

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Reconciling Macroeconomics and Finance for the U.S. Corporate Sector: 1929 to Present

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-02-01 · 2 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We examine how to quantitatively reconcile the high volatility of market valuations of U.S. corporations with the relative stability of macroeconomic quantities since 1929.Macroeconomic and financial variables are measured in a consistent fashion using the Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts (IMA) of the United States.We first use a finance-style valuation model that builds on Campbell and Shiller (1987) to interpret fluctuations in the market value of U.S. corporations from 1929 to 2023, using these IMA data.We find that fluctuations in expected cash flows to firm owners have been the dominant driver of those fluctuations in value; fluctuations in expected rates of return have played a smaller role.We then develop a stochastic growth model, extended to incorporate factorless income, which we use to decompose corporate cash flows and associated valuations into income and value due to physical capital and factorless income.Finally, we ask whether expected returns to investing in capital in our macroeconomic model are consistent with the series for expected returns estimated from our finance-style valuation model.We find that they are.In this sense, we reconcile volatile market valuations and stable capital output ratios.

  PublisherDOI

• The End of Privilege: A Reexamination of the Net Foreign Asset Position of the United States

  American Economic Review · 2025-06-30 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The US net foreign asset position declined sharply after 2007, reaching negative 60 percent of GDP by the third quarter of 2023. This deterioration primarily reflects a US-specific rise in corporate asset values that inflated the value of US equity liabilities to the rest of the world. To interpret these trends, we develop an international macrofinance model of flows, stocks, asset valuations, the current account, and the net foreign asset position. We find that the welfare impact of rising asset values for a representative US household has been quite negative given extensive foreign ownership of US corporate equity. (JEL F32, F21, F40, G15)

  PublisherDOI

• Reconciling Macroeconomics and Finance for the U.S. Corporate Sector: 1929 to Present

  2025-02-04

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We examine how to quantitatively reconcile the high volatility of market valuations of U.S. corporations with the relative stability of macroeconomic quantities since 1929. Macroeconomic and financial variables are measured in a consistent fashion using the Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts (IMA) of the United States. We first use a finance- style valuation model that builds on Campbell and Shiller (1987) to interpret fluctuations in the market value of U.S. corporations from 1929 to 2023, using these IMA data. We find that fluctuations in expected cash flows to firm owners have been the dominant driver of those fluctuations in value; fluctuations in expected rates of return have played a smaller role. We then develop a stochastic growth model, extended to incorporate factorless income, which we use to decompose corporate cash flows and associated valuations into income and value due to physical capital and factorless income. Finally, we ask whether expected returns to investing in capital in our macroeconomic model are consistent with the series for expected returns estimated from our finance-style valuation model. We find that they are. In this sense, we reconcile volatile market valuations and stable capital output ratios.

  PublisherDOI

• Reconciling Macroeconomics and Finance for the U.S. Corporate Sector: 1929 to Present

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• There is No Excess Volatility Puzzle

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-05-01 · 1 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We present two valuation models that we use to account for the annual data on price per share and dividends per share for the CRSP Value-Weighted Index from 1929-2023.We show that it is a simple matter to account for these data based purely on a model of variation over time in the expected ratio of dividends per share to aggregate consumption under two conditions.First, investors must receive news shocks regarding the expected ratio of dividends per share to aggregate consumption in the long run.Second, the discount rate used to evaluate the impact of this news on the current price per share must be low.We use the approach of Campbell and Shiller (1987) and Campbell and Shiller (1988) to argue that the cash flow news in our model is not a stand-in for changes in expected returns: with our model parameters, returns are not predictable and price dividend spreads and ratios predict dividend growth at model-implied magnitudes.We illustrate which parameter choices account for differences between our results and prior findings in the literature.We conclude that the answer to Shiller (1981)'s question "Do stock prices move too much to be justified by subsequent movements in dividends?" is "not necessarily".

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Measuring Firms' Financial Soundness

  NSF · $463k · 2013–2017

Frequent coauthors

• Patrick J. Kehoe

  432 shared

• Fernando Álvarez

  University of Chicago

  104 shared

• Pierre-Olivier Weill

  90 shared

• Andrea L. Eisfeldt

  88 shared

• V. V. Chari

  78 shared

• Susan Athey

  75 shared

• Guillermo Ordóñez

  University of Pennsylvania

  56 shared

• Christian Hellwig

  53 shared