To Estimate Market Risk Premium with respect to Market Leverage in Tehran Stock Exchange

This research applies and compares the Market Leverage Lally method, Ibbotson and Sinquefield Method and Siegel Method, to present alternative measures for Market Risk Premium (MRP) estimation and test forecasting power of these methods in calculating expected rate of return. The higher level of leverage implies greater risk of investment in a specified stock, so higher return is expected by investors. Lally has presented the time-varying model in which, leverage of the companies is considered as a risk measure and vary through the time. But in Siegel and Ibbotson methods, leverage level is not considered and market return and risk free rate are constant. As a result of this research which is done for 69 listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE), for the years 2002 to 2008, Lally method has minimum Squared Error (MSE) in comparison with its 2 alternatives in estimation of expected rate of return.