The fundamental-to-market ratio and the value premium decline

Recent evidence indicates the value premium declined over time. We argue this decline happened because book equity, BE, is no longer a good proxy for fundamental equity, FE, defined as the present value of cash flows under a common discount rate across firms. Specifically, we estimate FE for public US firms over time and find that the premium associated with the fundamental-to-market ratio, FE/ME, subsumes the BE/ME premium and has been relatively stable while the cross-sectional correlation between FE/ME and BE/ME decreased over time, inducing an apparent decline in the value premium. We also show that FE/ME captures the value premium better than several alternative value signals beyond BE/ME.