The investment of the ECB reserves in US dollars and yen involves an annual performance assessment of portfolio managers, located in the Eurosystem�s national central banks. Employing new data on individual portfolios during 2002-2009, we study this peculiar tournament and show the...

This paper investigates whether preference interactions can explain why risk preferences change over time and across contexts. We conduct an experiment in which subjects accept or reject gambles involving real money gains and losses. We introduce within-subject variation by alternating...

We analytically show that a common across rich/poor individuals Stone-Geary utility function with subsistence consumption in the context of a simple two-asset portfolio-choice model is capable of qualitatively and quantitatively explaining: (i) the higher saving rates of the rich, (ii) the...

We show that if an agent is uncertain about the precise form of his utility function, his actual relative risk aversion may depend on wealth even if he knows his utility function lies in the class of constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) utility functions. We illustrate the consequences of this...

US data and new stockholding data from fifteen European countries and China exhibit a common pattern: stockholding shares increase in household income and wealth. Yet, there is a multitude of numbers to match through models. Using a single utility function across households (parsimony), we...

We propose a new decision criterion under risk in which people extract both utility from anticipatory feelings ex ante and disutility from disappointment ex post. The decision maker chooses his degree of optimism, given that more optimism raises both the utility of ex ante feelings and the risk...

We solve in closed form the optimal consumption / portfolio choice problem for the class of isoelastic utility functions under incomplete information about the mean return of the stock price. Our approach consists in converting the original investor's problem into an equivalent program where the...

This paper investigates the uncertainty in variance and covariance of asset returns. It is commonly believed that these second moments can be estimated very accurately. However, time varying volatility and nonnormality of asset returns can lead to imprecise variance estimates. Using CRSP value...

This paper investigates the uncertainty in variance and covariance of asset returns. It is commonly believed that these second moments can be estimated very accurately. However, time varying volatility and nonnormality of asset returns can lead to imprecise variance estimates. Using CRSP value...

We propose a new decision criterion under risk in which people extract both utility from anticipatory feelings ex ante and disutility from disappointment ex post. The decision maker chooses his degree of optimism, given that more optimism raises both the utility of ex ante feelings and the risk...