We discuss business cycle effects on the management of a trust fund set up to provide regular income on a continuing basis. Fund managers must find a balance between short-term and long-term variability of income. In our model the managers know that the expected return is mean-reverting, but...

This paper addresses investment and spending policies of endowment funds aiming to generate a stable income stream in perpetuity. The standard academic approach to the design of such policies is based on optimization of utility aggregated over time. However, the explicit purpose of many funds to...