We consider optimal consumption and portfolio investment problems of an investor who is interested in maximizing his utilities from consumption and terminal wealth subject to a random inflation in the consumption basket price over time. We consider two cases: (i) when the investor observes the...

We consider optimal consumption and portfolio investment problems of an investor who is interested in maximizing his utilities from consumption and terminal wealth subject to a random inflation in the consumption basket price over time. We consider two cases: (i) when the investor observes the...

The present SUERF Study includes a selection of papers based on the authors’ contributions to the Helsinki conference, jointly organized by SUERF,and Bank of Finland on 3 July,2015.

The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 has given rise to new regulatory initiatives to put restrictions on the size and term of bankers' pay. We revisit the question whether these regulations are justified, both theoretically and empirically. We model bonuses as a series of sequential call...

Regulators restrict bankers' risk-taking by bonus caps or deferrals. We derive a structural model to analyze these compensation regulations and show that for a risk-neutral banker subject to positive switching costs of reducing bank risk, a bonus deferral is impotent while a sufficiently tight...

In many democratic countries, the timing of elections is flexible. We explore this potentially valuable option using insights from option pricing in finance. The paper offers three main contributions on this problem. First, we derive a rationally-based mean-reverting political support process...

This paper produces a comprehensive theory of the value of Bayesian information and its static demand. Our key insight is to assume 'natural units' corresponding to the sample size of conditionally i.i.d. signals -- focusing on the smooth nearby model of the precision of an observation of a...

We model a banker's future bonuses as a series of call options on the bank's profits and show that bonus caps and deferrals reduce risk-taking. However, the banker's optimal risk-taking also depends on the costs of risk-taking. We calibrate the model to US banking data and show that lengthening...

The global financial crisis of 2007–2008 has given rise to new regulatory initiatives to put restrictions on the size and the term of bankers' pay. We revisit both theoretically and empirically the question of whether these regulations are justified. We model bonuses as a series of sequential...