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Journal of Political Economy Vol. 117 No. 3 2009

Asset Pricing Implications of Pareto Optimality with Private Information

Narayana Kocherlakota1,2,3; Luigi Pistaferri2,4

1 University of Minnesota · 2 National Bureau of Economic Research · 3 Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis · 4 Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract

We compare the empirical performance of a standard incomplete markets asset pricing model with that of a novel model with constrained Pareto‐optimal allocations. We represent the models’ stochastic discount factors in terms of the cross‐sectional distribution of consumption and use these representations to evaluate the models’ empirical implications. The first model is inconsistent with the equity premium in the United States, United Kingdom, and Italy. The second model is consistent with the equity premium and the risk‐free rate in all three countries if the coefficient of relative risk aversion is roughly 5 and the quarterly discount factor is less than 0.5.

DOI
10.1086/599761
Volume
117
Issue
3
Pages
555-590
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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