There is an increasing consensus that global ‘excess saving’ has contributed to a reduction in equilibrium real interest rates. This implies a decline in yields of all assets including,but not restricted to, government bond yields.This column argues that since the turn of the century,the global economy has also been characterized by a rise in the yields on quoted equity, a feature for which the standard excess saving story cannot easily account.A separate explanation is that an increase in the global risk premium has increased the wedge between risk-free interest rates and the real required return on risky investments […]