This paper studies the effect of investor-specific differential dividend taxation on the dynamics of equilibrium security prices and allocations. In order to deal with the inherent Pareto inefficiency of such an equilibrium as well as the preclusion of tax arbitrage, we construct a continuous-time equilibrium via a representative investor with state-dependent utility. Investors differ in their pricing of risk, inducing investor-specific consumption-based CAPMs, with differential taxation appearing as an additional factor. The interest rate, stock price, and consumption dynamics are also impacted. Under logarithmic preferences, risk is transferred from the higher-taxed to the lower-taxed investor, and the interest rate decreases to counteract extra precautionary savings against this suboptimally shared risk. Numerical analysis reveals further tax rate, time-to-horizon, and dividend risk effects on equilibrium quantities. For most wealth allocations, the stock return volatility is increased above the no-tax benchmark. JEL classification codes: G10, G12, D51, D58, H20

[Empirical evidence suggests that investor protection significantly affects ownership concentration and asset prices. We develop a dynamic asset pricing model to address the empirical regularities and uncover some of the underlying mechanisms at play. Our model features a controlling shareholder that endogenously accumulates control over a firm, and diverts a fraction of its output. Better investor protection decreases stock holdings of controlling shareholders, increases stock mean returns, and increases stock return volatilities when ownership concentration is sufficiently high, consistent with the related empirical evidence. The model also predicts that better protection increases interest rates and decreases the controlling shareholder’s leverage.]

We provide fully analytical, optimal dynamic hedges in incomplete markets by employing the traditional minimum-variance criterion. Our hedges are in terms of generalized “Greeks” and naturally extend no-arbitrage–based risk management in complete markets to incomplete markets. Whereas the literature characterizes either minimum-variance static, myopic, or dynamic hedges from which a hedger may deviate unless able to precommit, our hedges are time-consistent. We apply our results to derivatives replication with infrequent trading and determine hedges and replication values, which reduce to generalized Black-Scholes expressions in specific settings. We also investigate dynamic hedging with jumps, stochastic correlation, and portfolio management with benchmarking.

Toronto and University of Warwick for helpful comments. All errors are our responsibility. Dynamic Mean-Variance Asset Allocation Mean-variance criteria remain prevalent in multi-period problems, and yet not much is known about their dynamically optimal policies. We provide a fully analytical characterization of the optimal dynamic mean-variance portfolios within a general incomplete-market economy, and recover a simple structure that also inherits several conventional properties of static models. We also identify a probability measure that incorporates intertemporal hedging demands and facilitates much tractability in the explicit computation of portfolios. We solve the problem by explicitly recognizing the time-inconsistency of the mean-variance criterion and deriving a recursive representation for it, which makes dynamic programming applicable. We further show that our time-consistent solution is generically different from the pre-commitment solutions in the extant literature, which maximize the mean-variance criterion at an initial date and which the investor commits to follow despite incentives to deviate. We illustrate the usefulness of our analysis by explicitly computing dynamic mean-variance portfolios under various stochastic investment opportunities in a straightforward way, which does not involve solving a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman

This article develops a general equilibrium, continuous time model where portfolio constraints generate mispricing between redundant securities. Constrained consumption-portfolio optimization techniques are adapted to incorporate redundant, possibly mispriced securities. Under logarithmic preferences, we provide explicit conditions for mispricing and closed-form expressions for all economic quantities. Existence of an equilibrium where mispricing occurs with positive probability is verified in a specific case. In a more general setting, we demonstrate the necessity of mispricing for equilibrium when agents are heterogeneous enough. The construction of a representative agent with stochastic weights allows us to characterize prices and allocations, given mispricing occurs.

This article solves the equilibrium problem in a pure-exchange, continuous-time economy in which some agents face information costs or other types of frictions effectively preventing them from investing in the stock market. Under the assumption that the restricted agents have logarithmic utilities, a complete characterization of equilibrium prices and consumption/ investment policies is provided. A simple calibration shows that the model can help resolve some of the empirical asset pricing puzzles. It is well documented that even in well-developed capital markets, a large fraction of households does not participate in the stock market. For example, Mankiw and Zeldes (1991) report that 72.4 % of the households in a representative sample from the 1984 Panel Study of Income Dynamics held no stocks at all. 1 These households earned 62 % of the aggregate disposable income and accounted for 68 % of aggre-We thank Steve Shreve for several conversations on this topic and Kerry

Much empirical evidence shows that stock short-selling costs and bans have significant effects on option prices. We reconcile these findings by providing a dynamic analysis of option prices with costly short-selling and option market makers. We obtain simple, closed-form, unique option bid and ask prices that represent option market makers’ expected hedging costs, and are weighted averages of well-known benchmark prices (Black–Scholes, Heston). Our analysis delivers rich implications that support the empirical evidence on the effects of short-selling costs and bans on option prices, as well as uncovering several novel predictions. We also apply our methodology to corporate bonds, which have option-like payoffs.

Absent much theory, empirical works often rely on the following informal reasoning when looking for evidence of a mutual fund tournament: If there is a tournament, interim winners have incentives to decrease their portfolio volatility as they attempt to protect their lead, while interim losers are expected to increase their volatility so as to catch up with winners. We consider a rational model of a mutual fund tournament in the presence of short-sale constraints and find the opposite: Interim winners choose more volatile portfolios in equilibrium than interim losers. Several empirical works present evidence consistent with our model. However, based on the above informal argument, they appear to conclude against the tournament behavior. We argue that this conclusion is unwarranted. We also demonstrate that tournament incentives lead to differences in interim performance for otherwise identical managers and that mid-year trading volume is inversely related to mid-year stock return.

This article analyses the implications of money illusion for investor behaviour and asset prices in a securities market economy with inflationary fluctuations. We provide a belief-based formulation of money illusion which accounts for the systematic mistakes in evaluating real and nominal quantities. The impact of money illusion on security prices and their dynamics is demonstrated to be considerable even though its welfare cost on investors is small in typical environments. A money-illusioned investor's real consumption is shown to generally depend on the price level, and specifically to decrease in the price level. A general-equilibrium analysis in the presence of money illusion generates implications that are consistent with several empirical regularities. In particular, the real bond yields and dividend price ratios are positively related to expected inflation, the real short rate is negatively correlated with realized inflation, and money illusion may induce predictability and excess volatility in stock returns. The basic analysis is generalized to incorporate heterogeneous investors with differing degrees of illusion.

This article analyzes optimal, dynamic portfolio and wealth/consumption policies of utility maximizing investors who must also manage market-risk exposure using Value-at-Risk (VaR). We find that VaR risk managers often optimally choose a larger exposure to risky assets than non-risk managers and consequently incur larger losses when losses occur. We suggest an alternative risk-management model, based on the expectation of a loss, to remedy the shortcomings of VaR. A general-equilibrium analysis reveals that the presence of VaR risk managers amplifies the stock-market volatility at times of down markets and attenuates the volatility at times of up markets.