A way of comparing the performance of bonds and shares. The gap is defined as the average yield on equities minus the average yield on bonds. Because shares are usually riskier investments than bonds, you might expect them to have a higher yield. In practice, the yield gap is often negative, with bonds yielding more than equities. This is not because investors regard equities as safer than bonds (see equity risk premium). Rather, it is that they expect most of the benefit from buying shares to come from an increase in their price (capital appreciation) rather than from dividend payments. Bond investors usually expect more of their gains to come from coupon payments. They also worry that inflation will erode the real value of future coupons, making them value current payments more highly than those due in years to come. Moreover, the usefulness of the dividend yield as a guide to the performance of shares has declined since the early 1990s, as increasingly companies have chosen to return cash to shareholders by buying back their own shares rather than paying out bigger dividends.