Portfolio choice with internal habit formation : a life-cycle model with uninsurable labor income risk.

Motivated by the success of internal habit formation preferences in explaining asset pricing puzzles, we introduce these preferences in a life-cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice with liquidity constraints, undiversifiable labor income risk and stock-market participation costs. In contrast to the initial motivation, we find that the model is not able to simultaneously match two very important stylized facts: a low stock market participation rate, and moderate equity holdings for those households that do invest in stocks. Habit formation increases wealth accumulation because the intertemporal consumption smoothing motive is stronger. As a result, households start participating in the stock market very early in life, and invest their portfolios almost fully in stocks. Therefore, we conclude that, with respect to its ability to match the empirical evidence on asset allocation behavior, the internal habit formation model is dominated by its time-separable utility counterpart.

A multifactor consumption based asset pricing model of the UK stock market: The US stock market as a wealth reference

Here a multifactor model of UK stock returns is developed, replacing the conventional consumption habit reference by a relation that depends on US wealth. Two step Instrumental Variables and Generalized Method of Moments estimators are applied to reduce the impact of weak instruments. The standard errors are corrected for the generated regressor problem and the model is found to explain UK excess returns by UK consumption growth and expected US excess returns. Hence, controlling for nomina l effects by subtracting a risk free rate and conditioning on real US excess returns provides a coherent explanation of the equity premium puzzle

Term premium and equity premium in economies with habit formation

In this paper we investigate the size of the risk premium and the term premium in an representative agent exchange model economy where households preferences are subject to habit formation. As a novel feature, we develop theoretical measures for risk premium and term premium that can be used even when the consumption growth process is serially autocorrelated. We find that habit formation increases risk aversion significantly but increases much more the aversion to variations of consumption across dates. This induces a substantial increase in the precautionary demand of short term assets and a significant fall in the precautionary demand of long term assets. As a result, the term premium increases substantially with habit formation. Next we calibrate our model economy and examine the quantitative predictions of our theoretical measures of equity premium, risk premium and term premium. In line with previous literature, we show that it is possible to find a reasonable calibration for which the equity premium is that observed in the data. However, we find that around 70 percent of the equity premium is just term premium. That is, a very large fraction of the increase in the equity premium is due to the asymmetric effect that habit formation has on the precautionary demand of an asset depending on its maturity

Habit Persistence and Welfare Gains from International Asset Trade

We introduce habit formation in a model that studies the link between international trade in financial assets, economic growth, and welfare. As with time separable preferences asset trade increases the mean growth rate, but it also increases growth-volatility. We demonstrate that the welfare gain from asset trade is lower with habit persistence in consumption. This reflects that the habit-forming households perceive the higher growth-volatility as a higher cost to obtain increased average growth. Calibrating the model to data for North America and Western Europe, we find that habit persistence lowers welfare gains of financial integration by about 40-50 %.Habit formation; financial integration; growth; welfare

Asset Pricing With Multiplicative Habit and Power-Expo Preferences (Subsequently published in "Economics Letters", 2007, 94(3), 319-325. )

Multiplicative habit introduces an additional consumption risk as a determinant of equity premium, and allows time preference and habit strength, in addition to risk aversion, to affect "price of risk". A model combining multiplicative habit and power-expo preferences cannot be rejected.

A Parsimonious Macroeconomic Model for Asset Pricing: Habit Formation or Cross-sectional Heterogeneity?

In this paper we study the asset pricing implications of a parsimonious two-agent macroeconomic model with two key features: limited participation in the stock market and heterogeneity in the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. The parameter values for the model are taken from the real business cycle literature and are not calibrated to match any financial statistic. Yet, with a risk aversion of two, the model is able to explain a large number of asset pricing phenomena including all the facts matched by the external habit model of Campbell and Cochrane (1999). Examples in this list include a high equity premium and a low risk-free rate; a counter-cyclical risk premium, volatility and Sharpe ratio; predictable stock returns with coe?cients and R2 values of long-horizon regressions matching their empirical counterparts, among others. In addition the model generates a risk-free rate with low volatility (5.7 percent annually) and with high persistence. We also show that the similarity of our results to those from an external habit model is not a coincidence: the model has a reduced form representation which is extremely similar to Campbell and Cochrane’s framework for asset pricing. However, the macroeconomic implications of the two models are very different, favoring the limited participation model. Moreover, we show that policy analysis yields dramatically different conclusions in each framework.Limited stock market participation, asset pricing, the equity premium puzzle, incomplete markets, habit formation, elasticity of intertemporal substitution.

The Current Account and the Interest Differential In Canada

For post-1975 Canadian data, we document the joint behavior of output, the current account, and the interest differential at the business cycle frequency. We also interpret the joint behavior using a simple small open economy model. Our simple model assumes that agents have access to world international financial markets, but face country-specific interest rate on their holdings of world assets. The interest differential depends negatively on the country’s net foreign asset position. We find that our simple model matches the Canadian data remarkably well.International Real Business Cycle, Small Open Economy, Habit Formation.

Asset pricing, habit memory, and the labor market

This article studies the asset pricing and the business cycle implications of habit formation in a production economy with capital adjustment costs and endogenous labor supply. A specification of internal habit in the mix of consumption and leisure which minimizes the wealth effect on labor supply is introduced into an otherwise standard real business cycle model. This mechanism enhances the model’s ability to explain asset pricing puzzles. JEL Classification: G12, E32, J22adjustment costs, equity premium puzzle, Labor supply

"Asset Pricing With Multiplicative Habit and Power-Expo Preferences"

Multiplicative habit introduces an additional consumption risk as a determinant of equity premium, and allows time preference and habit strength, in addition to risk aversion, to affect "price of risk". A model combining multiplicative habit and power-expo preferences cannot be rejected.

Learning and Visceral Temptation in Dynamic Savings Experiments

In models of optimal savings with income uncertainty and habit formation, people should save early to create a buffer stock, to cushion bad income draws and limit the negative internality from habit formation. In experiments in this setting, people save too little initially, but learn to save optimally within four repeated lifecycles, or 1-2 lifecycles with “social learning.” Using beverage rewards (cola) to create visceral temptation, thirsty subjects who consume immediately overspend compared to subjects who only drink after time delay. The relative overspending of immediate-consumption subjects is consistent with hyperbolic discounting and dual-self models. Estimates of the present-bias choices are β=0.6-0.7, which are consistent with other studies (albeit over different time horizons)