Pricing Illiquid Assets

The present paper investigates the portfolio allocation decisions of an investor with infinite horizon when available financial assets differ in their degrees of liquidity. A model with risk neutral agents allows us to endogenously determine the liquidity premium. With risk averse agents, we develop a nontrivial portfolio allocation problem, which enables us to calculate the demand for an illiquid asset for any given yield premium. We calibrate and numerically simulate both models. Reasonable parameter values imply a liquidity premium of 1.7% for the risk neutral case. In the portfolio allocation problem we find that a reasonable amount of illiquidity can cause a substantial drop of demand for the asset. We are also able to calculate the price discount at which an agent would be indifferent between immediate sale and waiting for a buyer with a fundamentally justified price.

Pricing Liquidity Risk with Heterogeneous Investment Horizons

We develop an asset pricing model with stochastic transaction costs and investors with heterogeneous horizons. Depending on their horizon, investors hold different sets of assets in equilibrium. This generates segmentation and spillover effects for expected returns, where the liquidity (risk) premium of illiquid assets is determined by investor horizons and the correlation between liquid and illiquid asset returns. We estimate our model for the cross-section of U.S. stock returns and find that it generates a good fit, mainly due to a combination of a substantial expected liquidity premium and segmentation effects, while the liquidity risk premium is small

Options hedging under liquidity costs

Following the framework of Cetin, Jarrow and Protter (CJP) we study the problem of super-replication in presence of liquidity costs under additional restrictions on the gamma of the hedging strategies in a generalized Black-Scholes economy. We find that the minimal super-replication price is different than the one suggested by the Black-Scholes formula and is the unique viscosity solution of the associated dynamic programming equation. This is in contrast with the results of CJP who find that the arbitrage free price of a contingent claim coincides with the Black-Scholes price. However, in CJP a larger class of admissible portfolio processes is used and the replication is achieved in the L^2 approximating sense

Interbank lending, credit risk premia and collateral

We study the functioning of secured and unsecured inter-bank markets in the presence of credit risk. The model generates empirical predictions that are in line with developments during the 2007-2009 financial crises. Interest rates decouple across secured and unsecured markets following an adverse shock to credit risk. The scarcity of underlying collateral may amplify the volatility of interest rates in secured markets. We use the model to discuss various policy responses to the crisis. JEL Classification: G01, G21, E58collateral, Credit risk, financial crisis, Interbank Market, liquidity