Abstract With constrained portfolios contingent claims do not generally have a unique price that rules out arbitrage opportunities. Earlier studies have demonstrated that when there are constraints onthe hedge portfolio, a no-arbitrage price interval for any contingent claim exists. I consider the more realistic case where the constraints are imposed on the total portfolio of each investor and define reservation buying and selling prices for contingent claims. I derive properties of these prices, show how they can be computed numerically, and study two simple examples in which the reservation prices and the corresponding hedging strategies are compared to the Black–Scholes setting. JEL classification C63, D52, G11, G13.

Abstract Applying a rich model of individuals’ life-cycle utility maximization, I comprehensively evaluate retirement saving plans. Across a range of individual characteristics, access to basic plans with constant expected payouts and no or full annuitization leads to individual utility gains of up to 5.07% of initial wealth and lifetime income ($43,800 in present value terms), and almost all individuals prefer full annuitization and a target-date fund investment strategy. With flexible plans allowing for partial annuitization and non-constant expected payouts, utility gains go up to 5.81%, and most individuals prefer a high degree of annuitization and expected payouts being increasing through retirement.

We embed human capital as an innate, illiquid asset in Markowitz’ one-period mean-variance framework. By solving the Markowitz problem for different values of the ratio of human capital to financial wealth, we emulate life-cycle effects in household portfolio decisions. The portfolio derived with this simple approach matches the optimal portfolio from the much more complicated dynamic life-cycle models. An application illustrates that young households may optimally refrain from stock investments because a house investment combined with a mortgage is more attractive from a pure investment perspective. Another application examines the theoretical support for the observed growth/value tilts in households’ portfolios.

We solve for optimal portfolios when interest rates and labor income are stochastic with the expected income growth being affine in the short-term interest rate in order to encompass business cycle variations in wages. Our calibration based on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data supports this relation with substantial variation across individuals in the slope of this affine function. The slope is crucial for the valuation and riskiness of human capital and for the optimal stock/bond/cash allocation both in an unconstrained complete market and in an incomplete market with liquidity and short-sales constraints.

Abstract In a rich, calibrated life-cycle model, we show that well-designed mandatory pension plans significantly improve the welfare of individuals procrastinating on savings, and even improve most rational individuals’ welfare through a return tax advantage and fair annuitization. For a group of heterogeneous savers, in terms of preferences and sophistication, the best plan has contributions of 10% of income from age 30, a glidepath investment strategy, payouts following a variable lifelong annuity, and options to choose a different investment strategy and to modify the annuitization feature. This plan generates an average welfare gain of $175,000 per individual.

We compare the durations (the percentage price sensitivity with respect to the default-free short rate) of corporate and Treasury bonds in the reduced-form, intensity-based credit risk modeling framework. In a frequently used intensity-based model for corporate bond valuation we provide an example showing that, given the parameter estimates found in empirical studies, the duration of a corporate coupon bond may very well be larger than the duration of a similar Treasury bond. This finding contrasts with conclusions of previous studies. In a general, intensity-based recovery of market value framework we provide a simple sufficient condition for when the duration of a corporate bond will be smaller than that of a similar Treasury bond. We also provide an upper bound on the duration of the corporate coupon bond.

We characterize the solution to the consumption and investment problem of a power utility investor in a continuous-time dynamically complete market with stochastic changes in the opportunity set. Under stochastic interest rates the investor optimally hedges against changes in the term structure of interest rates by investing in a coupon bond, or portfolio of bonds, with a payment schedule that equals the forward-expected (i.e. certainty equivalent) consumption pattern. Numerical experiments with two different specifications of the term structure dynamics (the Vasicek model and a three-factor non-Markovian Heath–Jarrow–Morton model) suggest that the hedge portfolio is more sensitive to the form of the term structure than to the dynamics of interest rates.

Abstract We solve a rich life-cycle model of household decisions involving consumption of perishable goods and housing services, habit formation for housing consumption, stochastic labor income, stochastic house prices, home renting and owning, stock investments, and portfolio constraints. In line with empirical observations, the optimal decisions involve (i) stock investments that are low or zero for many young agents and then gradually increasing over life, (ii) an age- and wealth-dependent housing expenditure share, (iii) non-housing consumption being significantly more sensitive to wealth and income shocks than housing consumption, and (iv) non-housing consumption being hump-shaped over life.

ABSTRACT We derive the optimal compensation contract in a principal–agent setting in which outcome is used to provide incentives for both effort and risky investments. To motivate investment, optimal compensation entails rewards for high as well as low outcomes, and it is increasing at the mean outcome to motivate effort. If rewarding low outcomes is infeasible, compensation consisting of stocks and options is a near‐efficient means of overcoming the manager's induced aversion to undertaking risky investments, whereas stock compensation is not. However, stock plus option compensation may induce excessively risky investments, and capping pay can be important in curbing such behavior.

This paper studies finite-horizon consumption-portfolio decisions with recursive utility. We show that the parameter seemingly representing the individual’s bequest preference in traditional recursive utility formulations is quantitatively and qualitatively misleading. The parameter value is uninformative about the optimal bequest which, in some cases, is even inversely related to the magnitude of the apparent bequest weight. We argue that the ratio between optimal bequest and the optimal consumption rate just before the terminal date is a much better representation of the strength of the bequest motive. Numerical examples illustrate the pitfalls using the traditional specification and clarifies how the bequest preference affects optimal decisions and the life-cycle patterns of consumption and wealth assuming constant investment opportunities or stochastic interest rates. We show that the typical utility representation for a unit elasticity of intertemporal substitution actually assumes a strong bequest preference.