We provide a framework in which we link the valuation and asset allocation policies of defined benefits plans with the lifetime marginal productivity schedule of the worker and the pension plan formula. In turn, we examine the retirement policies that are implied by the primitives of the model and the value of pension obligations. Our model provides an explicit valuation formula for a stylized ...

This paper studies the relationship between investor risk preferences and asset returns. The paper provides direct evidence on the risk aversion of participants in a securities market. It uses the prices of lottery bonds issued by the Imperial Russian Government in 1864 and 1866 to estimate investor risk aversion and to study changes in preferences toward risk. Time variation in investor risk p...

Given an asset with value , we revisit the Black and Scholes dynamics t S   d log d t S t t         when the driving noise t  is a non-Gaussian super-diffusive stochastic process with variance of the type 2 t t   . This super-diffusive quadratic variance behavior, synthesizes a ballistic component which would occur in strongly fluctuating environments. When    , the assets can, ...

The literature on capital allocation is biased towards an asset modeling framework rather than an actuarial framework. The asset modeling framework leads to the proliferation of inappropriate assumptions about the effect of insurance line of business growth on aggregate loss distributions. This paper explains why an actuarial analog of the asset volume/return model should be based on a Lévy pro...

Figure 1 documents a strong negative relation in the United States between wealth (household net worth, from the Federal Reserve Flow of Funds, as a fraction of GDP) and aggregate volatility, measured as standard deviation of real GDP growth rate. Periods when net worth is high, reflecting high prices for housing and/or stocks, tend to be periods of low volatility in aggregate output, employmen...

This paper constructs a recursive utility version of a canonical Merton (1971) model with uninsurable labor income and unknown income growth to study how the interaction between two types of uncertainty due to ignorance affects strategic consumption-portfolio rules and precautionary savings. Specifically, after solving the model explicitly, we theoretically and quantitatively explore (i) how th...

An integrated monetary growth model of Keynes–Metzler–Goodwin type with a portfolio approach to its three asset markets (money, bonds, equities) is introduced to study the interaction between the real and the financial part of market economies. Beneath expectations and governmental behavior, profits and their implied dividend payments influence the behavior of asset markets, which determine int...

We introduce a “bad environment-good environment” technology for consumption growth in a consumption-based asset pricing model. Using the preference structure from Campbell and Cochrane (1999), the model generates realistic time-varying volatility, skewness and kurtosis in fundamentals while still permitting closed-form solutions for asset prices. The model not only fits standard salient asset ...