← Search

Journal of Finance Vol. 48 No. 5 1993

Asset‐pricing Puzzles and Incomplete Markets

Chris Telmer

Queen's University

open access

Abstract

The representative agent theory of asset pricing is modified to incorporate heterogeneous agents and incomplete markets. The model features two types of agents who differ up to a nontradable, idiosyncratic component in their endowment processes. Numerical solutions indicate that individuals are able to diversify a substantial portion of their idiosyncratic income risk through riskless borrowing and lending alone. Restrictions on the variability of intertemporal marginal rates of substitution ( Hansen and Jagannathan (1991) ) are used to argue that incomplete markets, as modeled here, cannot account for the properties of asset returns that are anomalous from the perspective of representative agent theory.

DOI
10.1111/j.1540-6261.1993.tb05129.x
Volume
48
Issue
5
Pages
1803-1832
Language
en
Sources
crossref openalex

Cite