RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Solving the Equity Risk Premium Puzzle and Inching Toward a Theory of Everything JF The Journal of Private Equity FD Institutional Investor Journals SP 45 OP 63 DO 10.3905/jpe.2018.21.2.045 VO 21 IS 2 A1 Ravi Kashyap YR 2018 UL https://pm-research.com/content/21/2/45.abstract AB The crux of the equity premium puzzle is that the return on equities has far exceeded the average return on short-term, risk-free debt and cannot be explained by conventional representative-agent, consumption-based equilibrium models. The author reviews several attempts undertaken over the years to explain this anomaly and explores whether a fusion of the approaches supplemented with better methods to handle various reservations would provide a more realistic and yet tractable framework to tackle the various conundrums in the social sciences. The rationale for a unified theory is that beauty can emerge from chaos and many long-standing puzzles seem to have been resolved using different techniques.TOPICS: Private equity, analysis of individual factors/risk premia, performance measurement, risk management