Consumption and Portfolio Choice Under Internal Multiplicative Habit Formation

Consumption and Portfolio Choice Under Internal Multiplicative Habit Formation
Author: Servaas van Bilsen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 51
Release: 2018
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper explores the optimal consumption and investment behavior of an individual who derives utility from the ratio between his consumption and an endogenous habit. We obtain closed-form policies under general utility functionals and stochastic investment opportunities, by developing a non-trivial linearization to the budget constraint. This enables us to explicitly characterize how habit formation a ffects the marginal propensity to consume and optimal stock-bond investments. We also show that in a setting which combines habit formation with Epstein-Zin utility, consumption no longer grows at unrealistically high rates at high ages and investments in risky assets decrease.

Consumption and Portfolio Choice Under Loss Aversion and Endogenous Updating of the Reference Level

Consumption and Portfolio Choice Under Loss Aversion and Endogenous Updating of the Reference Level
Author: Servaas van Bilsen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 47
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:

We explicitly derive and explore the optimal consumption and portfolio policies of a loss- averse individual who endogenously updates his reference level over time. We find that he protects his current consumption by delaying painful reductions in consumption after a drop in wealth, and increasingly so with higher degrees of endogeneity. The incentive to protect current consumption is stronger with a medium wealth level than with a high or low wealth level. Furthermore, this individual adopts a conservative investment strategy in normal states and typically a more aggressive strategy in good and bad states. Endogeneity of the reference level increases overall risk-taking and generates an incentive to reduce risk exposure with age even without human capital. The welfare loss that this individual would suffer under the conventional CRRA consumption and portfolio policies typically exceeds 10%.

Financial Markets and the Real Economy

Financial Markets and the Real Economy
Author: John H. Cochrane
Publisher: Now Publishers Inc
Total Pages: 117
Release: 2005
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1933019158

Financial Markets and the Real Economy reviews the current academic literature on the macroeconomics of finance.

Consumption-portfolio Choice with Preferences for Cash

Consumption-portfolio Choice with Preferences for Cash
Author: Holger Kraft
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:

This paper studies a consumption-portfolio problem where money enters the agent's utility function. We solve the corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation and provide closed-form solutions for the optimal consumption and portfolio strategy both in an infinite- and finite-horizon setting. For the infinite-horizon problem, the optimal stock demand is one particular root of a polynomial. In the finite-horizon case, the optimal stock demand is given by the inverse of the solution to an ordinary differential equation that can be solved explicitly. We also prove verification results showing that the solution to the Bellman equation is indeed the value function of the problem. From an economic point of view, we find that in the finite-horizon case the optimal stock demand is typically decreasing in age, which is in line with rules of thumb given by financial advisers and also with recent empirical evidence.