Evolutionary metaphors have been prominent in both economics and finance. They are often used as basic foundations for rational behavior and efficient markets. Theoretically, a mechanism which selects for rational investors actually requires many caveats, and is far from generic. This paper tests wealth based evolution in a simple, stylized agent-based financial market. The setup borrows extens...

We consider a firm acting strategically on behalf of its shareholders. The price normalization problem arising in general equilibrium models of imperfect competition can be overcome by using the concept of real wealth maximization. This concept is based on shareholders’ aggregate demand and does not involve any utility comparisons. We explore the efficiency properties of real wealth maxima for ...

Evolutionary metaphors have been prominent in both economics and finance. They are often used as basic foundations for rational behavior and efficient markets. Theoretically, a mechanism which selects for rational investors actually requires many caveats, and is far from generic. This paper tests wealth based evolution in a simple, stylized agent-based financial market. The setup borrows extens...

We consider the terminal wealth utility maximization problem from the point of view of a portfolio manager who is paid by an incentive scheme, which is given as a convex function g of the terminal wealth. The manager’s own utility function U is assumed to be smooth and strictly concave, however the resulting utility function U ◦ g fails to be concave. As a consequence, the problem considered he...

We consider the problem of maximization of expected utility from terminal wealth in a market model that is driven by a possibly not fully observable factor process and that takes explicitly into account the possibility of default for the individual assets as well as contagion (direct and information induced) among them. It is a multinomial model in discrete time that allows for an explicit solu...

In the context of a general multi-variate financial market with transaction costs, we consider the problem of maximizing expected utility from terminal wealth. In contrast with the existing literature, where only the liquidation value of the terminal portfolio is relevant, we consider general utility functions which are only required to be consistent with the structure of the transaction costs....

We consider a non-consuming agent interested in the maximization of the long-run growth rate of a wealth process investing either in a money market and in one risky asset following a geometric Brownian motion or in futures following an arithmetic Brownian motion. The agent faces proportional transaction costs, and similarly as in [17] where the case of stock trading is considered, we show how t...

Consumers' choices among many different types of information sub-a-fields are examined in a large, perfectly competitive pure exchange economy in which information serves as a consumption good as well as a device to aid in the maximization of state-dependent utility. Analysis of derived preferences over information and wealth (and the resulting value of information function) implies that indivi...

Correspondence: [email protected] Department of Economics, The George Washington University, Washington DC 20052, USA Abstract This paper analyzes the determinants of migration duration focusing on family composition and human capital. A utility maximization model is built to show that migrants face a trade-off between avoiding psychic costs from leaving family members and accumulating weal...

We introduce a linear space of finitely additive measures to treat the problem of optimal expected utility from consumption under a stochastic clock and an unbounded random endowment process. In this way we establish existence and uniqueness for a large class of utility-maximization problems including the classical ones of terminal wealth or consumption, as well as the problems that depend on a...