%0 Journal Article %A Ravi Kashyap %T Solving the Equity Risk Premium Puzzle and Inching Toward a Theory of Everything %D 2018 %R 10.3905/jpe.2018.21.2.045 %J The Journal of Private Equity %P 45-63 %V 21 %N 2 %X 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 %U https://jpe.pm-research.com/content/iijpriveq/21/2/45.full.pdf