In this paper, we introduce the concept of "self-justified equilibria" as a tractable alternative to rational expectations equilibria in stochastic general equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents. A self-justified equilibrium is a temporary equilibrium where, in each period, agents trade in...

This paper studies an Overlapping Generations model with stochastic production and incomplete markets to assess whether the introduction of an unfunded social security system can lead to a Pareto improvement. When returns to capital and wages are imperfectly correlated, the consumption variance...

We analyze consumption and portfolio behavior in a life-cycle model with realistic borrowing costs and income processes. We show that even a small wedge between borrowing costs and the risk-free return dramatically shrinks the demand for equity. When the cost of borrowing equals or exceeds the...

In general equilibrium models of financial markets, the capital asset pricing formula does not hold when agents have von Neumann-Morgenstern utility with constant relative risk aversion. In this paper we examine under which conditions on endowments and dividends the pricing formula provides a...

The general equilibrium model with incomplete asset markets provides a unified framework for many problems in finance and macroeconomics. In its simplest version with only two time periods and a single physical commodity the model is ideally suited for the study of problems in cross sectional...

In this paper we argue that in realistically calibrated two period general equilibrium models with incomplete markets CAPM-pricing provides a good benchmark for equilibrium prices even when agents are not mean-variance optimizers and returns are not normally distributed. We numerically...

We provide necessary and sufficient conditions such that consumption and asset demands in an incomplete market setting can be rationalized by Kreps-Porteus-Selden preferences and provide a means for recovering the underlying unique representations of risk and time preferences. The incompleteness...

In this paper, we address the problem of analyzing and computing the steady states of an overlapping generation (OLG) model with production and many generations. The characterization of steady states coincides with a geometrical representation of the algebraic variety of a polynomial ideal and,...

We construct a life-cycle model that delivers realistic behavior for housing demand over the life cycle and examine how the model can be calibrated to match basic housing facts in the Chinese economy. We use data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) 2011, 2013 and 2015 to construct...