This paper provides an explanation why garbage as a measure of consumption implies
a several times lower coefficient of relative risk aversion in the consumption-based asset
pricing model than consumption based on the official National Income and Product Ac-
counts (NIPA): Unlike garbage, NIPA consumption is filtered to mitigate measurement
error. I apply a structural model of the filtering process, which allows to revoke the
filter inherent in NIPA consumption. "Unfiltered NIPA consumption" performs as well
as garbage in explaining the equity premium and risk-free rate puzzle. Furthermore, I
find that two other popular NIPA-based measures, three-year and fourth-quarter NIPA
consumption, are related to unfiltered NIPA consumption. Both can be viewed as ad
hoc unfilter rules.
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