Flight Capital as a Portfolio Choice

This article sets flight capital in the context of portfoliochoice, focusing on the proportion of private wealth that isheld abroad. There are large regional differences in this proportion,ranging from 5 percent in South Asia to 40 percent in Africa.The authors explain cross-country differences in portfolio choiceusing variables that proxy differences in the risk-adjustedrate of return on capital. They apply the results to three policyissues: how the East Asian crisis affected domestic capitaloutflows; the effect of the International Monetary Fund–WorldBank debt relief initiative for heavily indebted poor countrieson capital repatriation; and why so much of Africa's privatewealth is held outside the continent.     

Correlation Risk and Optimal Portfolio Choice

We develop a new framework for multivariate intertemporal portfolio choice that allows us to derive optimal portfolio implications for economies in which the degree of correlation across industries, countries, or asset classes is stochastic. Optimal portfolios include distinct hedging components against both stochastic volatility and correlation risk. We find that the hedging demand is typically larger than in univariate models, and it includes an economically significant covariance hedging component, which tends to increase with the persistence of variance–covariance shocks, the strength of leverage effects, the dimension of the investment opportunity set, and the presence of portfolio constraints.     

Systemic Risk and International Portfolio Choice

Returns on international equities are characterized by jumps; moreover, these jumps tend to occur at the same time across countries leading to systemic risk. We capture these stylized facts using a multivariate system of jump‐diffusion processes where the arrival of jumps is simultaneous across assets. We then determine an investor's optimal portfolio for this model of returns. Systemic risk has two effects: One, it reduces the gains from diversification and two, it penalizes investors for holding levered positions. We find that the loss resulting from diminished diversification is small, while that from holding very highly levered positions is large.     

Hedging, Familiarity and Portfolio Choice

We exploit the restrictions of intertemporal portfolio choicein the presence of nonfinancial income risk to test hedgingusing the information contained in the actual portfolio of theinvestor. We use a unique data set of Swedish investors withinformation broken down at the investor level and into variouscomponents of investor wealth, income, and demographic characteristics.Portfolio holdings are identified at the stock level. We showthat investors do not hedge but invest in stocks closely relatedto their nonfinancial income. We explain this with familiarity,that is, the tendency to concentrate holdings in stocks to whichthe investor is geographically or professionally close or thathe has held for a long period. We show that familiarity is nota behavioral bias, but is information driven. Familiarity-basedinvestment allows investors to earn higher returns than theywould have otherwise earned if they had hedged.     

Rational Inattention and Portfolio Selection

Costly information acquisition makes it rational for investors to obtain important economic news with only limited frequency or limited accuracy. We show that this rational inattention to important news may make investors over‐ or underinvest. In addition, the optimal trading strategy is “myopic” with respect to future news frequency and accuracy. We find that the optimal news frequency is nonmonotonic in news accuracy and investment horizon. Furthermore, when both news frequency and news accuracy are endogenized, an investor with a higher risk aversion or a longer investment horizon chooses less frequent but more accurate periodic news updates.     

Portfolio Selection in Stochastic Environments

In this article, I explicitly solve dynamic portfolio choiceproblems, up to the solution of an ordinary differential equation(ODE), when the asset returns are quadratic and the agent hasa constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) coefficient. My solutionincludes as special cases many existing explicit solutions ofdynamic portfolio choice problems. I also present three applicationsthat are not in the literature. Application 1 is the bond portfolioselection problem when bond returns are described by "quadraticterm structure models." Application 2 is the stock portfolioselection problem when stock return volatility is stochasticas in Heston model. Application 3 is a bond and stock portfolioselection problem when the interest rate is stochastic and stockreturns display stochastic volatility. (JEL G11)     

Optimal Portfolio Choice for Long-Horizon Investors with Nontradable Labor Income

This paper examines how risky labor income and retirement affect optimal portfolio choice. With idiosyncratic labor income risk, the optimal allocation to stocks is unambiguously larger for employed investors than for retired investors, consistent with the typical recommendations of investment advisors. Increasing idiosyncratic labor income risk raises investors' willingness to save and reduces their stock portfolio allocation towards the level of retired investors. Positive correlation between labor income and stock returns has a further negative effect and can actually reduce stockholdings below the level of retired investors.     

Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Housing

I show that investment in housing plays a crucial role in explainingthe patterns of cross-sectional variation in the compositionof wealth and the level of stockholdings observed in portfoliocomposition data. Due to investment in housing, younger andpoorer investors have limited financial wealth to invest instocks, which reduces the benefits of equity market participation.House price risk crowds out stockholdings, and this crowdingout effect is larger for low financial net-worth. In the modelas in the data leverage is positively correlated with stockholdings.     

The Effect of Housing on Portfolio Choice

We show that characterizing the effects of housing on portfolios requires distinguishing between the effects of home equity and mortgage debt. We isolate exogenous variation in home equity and mortgages by using differences across housing markets in house prices and housing supply elasticities as instruments. Increases in property value (holding home equity constant) reduce stockholdings, while increases in home equity wealth (holding property value constant) raise stockholdings. The stock share of liquid wealth would rise by 1 percentage point—6% of the mean stock share—if a household were to spend 10% less on its house, holding fixed wealth.     

Portfolio Selection and Asset Pricing Models

Finance theory can be used to form informative prior beliefs in financial decision making. This paper approaches portfolio selection in a Bayesian framework that incorporates a prior degree of belief in an asset pricing model. Sample evidence on home bias and value and size effects is evaluated from an asset-allocation perspective. U.S. investors' belief in the domestic CAPM must be very strong to justify the home bias observed in their equity holdings. The same strong prior belief results in large and stable optimal positions in the Fama–French book-to-market portfolio in combination with the market since the 1940s.     

Portfolio Selection with Quadratic Utility Revisited

Considering a simple portfolio selection problem by agents with quadratic utility, an apparently counterintuitive outcome results. When such a choice is over two assets that can be ordered in terms of riskiness, an agent that is more risk averse may optimally invest a larger portion of wealth in the riskier asset. It is shown that such an outcome is not counterintuitive, since for the portfolios from which agents optimally choose, a larger proportion of investment in the riskier asset leads to a less risky portfolio.     

Consumption and Portfolio Choice over the Life Cycle

This article solves a realistically calibrated life cycle modelof consumption and portfolio choice with non-tradable laborincome and borrowing constraints. Since labor income substitutesfor riskless asset holdings, the optimal share invested in equitiesis roughly decreasing over life. We compute a measure of theimportance of human capital for investment behavior. We findthat ignoring labor income generates large utility costs, whilethe cost of ignoring only its risk is an order of magnitudesmaller, except when we allow for a disastrous labor incomeshock. Moreover, we study the implications of introducing endogenousborrowing constraints in this incomplete-markets setting.     

Wealth, Information Acquisition, and Portfolio Choice

I solve (with an approximation) a Grossman-Stiglitz economyunder general preferences, thus allowing for wealth effects.Because information generates increasing returns, decreasingabsolute risk aversion, in conjunction with the availabilityof costly information, is sufficient to explain why wealthierhouseholds invest a larger fraction of their wealth in riskyassets. One no longer needs to resort to decreasing relativerisk aversion, an empirically questionable assumption. Furthermore,I show how to distinguish empirically between these two explanations.Finally, I find that the availability of costly informationexacerbates wealth inequalities.     

二元Copula函数的投资组合模型选择

Coplua模型是组合投资风险评估中常用模型,它具有多种不同的类型,模型选择的好坏对风险评估结果具有至关重要的影响.本文主要比较了二元正态Copula模型和二元t-Copula模型对中国股市数据拟合的优劣程度.针对这两种模型,利用上证综指、深证成指、上证基金、深证基金、东风汽车、中国石化、宝钢股份和万家乐的日收盘价数据估计相应的参数得到相应的拟合分布,然后分别与经验Copula函数作比较,通过计算拟合分布与经验分布之间的距离,得出二元t-Cop-ula函数能更好地拟合两组投资组合的日收益率数据的结论.     

Income Risk and Portfolio Choice: An Empirical Study

This paper investigates the relationship between portfolio choice and labor income risk in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Cohort. Permanent income risk (variability of shocks to income that have permanent effect) significantly reduces the share of risky assets in the household's portfolio, while transitory income risk (variability of shocks with no lasting effect) does not. This result provides strong evidence that households' portfolio choices respond to labor income risks in a manner consistent with economic theory.     

Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Personal Illiquid Projects

Personal projects, such as a private business or the purchase of a home, influence individuals' portfolio choice. We conduct a theoretical analysis of this influence when financial assets are required to provide liquidity to personal projects. Due to this liquidity consideration, individuals behave in a more risk-averse fashion when there is a large penalty for discontinuing or underinvesting in the final stages of the projects. In addition, using data from the 1995 Survey of Consumer Finances, we find that households that are saving to invest in their own businesses or in their own homes indeed have significantly safer financial portfolios.