Insuring Consumption Using Income-Linked Assets

Shiller (2003) and others have argued for the creation of financial instruments that allow individuals to insure risks associated with their lifetime labor income. In this paper, we argue that while the purpose of such assets is to smooth consumption across states of nature, one must also consider the assets' effects on households' ability to smooth consumption over time. We show that consumers in a realistically calibrated life-cycle model would generally prefer income-linked loans (with a rate positively correlated with income shocks) to an income-hedging instrument (a limited liability asset whose returns correlate negatively with income shocks) even though the assets offer identical opportunities to smooth consumption across states. While for some parameterizations of our model the welfare gains from the presence of income-linked assets can be substantial (above 1% of certainty-equivalent consumption), the assets we consider can only mitigate a relatively small part of the welfare costs of labor income risk over the life cycle.

Natural Expectations and Macroeconomic Fluctuations

Economic

Natural Expectations, Macroeconomic Dynamics, and Asset Pricing

Economic

Natural Expectations, Macroeconomic Dynamics, and Asset Pricing

How does an economy behave if (1) fundamentals are truly hump-shaped, exhibiting momentum in the short run and partial mean reversion in the long run, and (2) agents do not know that fundamentals are hump-shaped and base their beliefs on parsimonious models that they fit to the available data? A class of parsimonious models leads to qualitatively similar biases and generates empirically observed patterns in asset prices and macroeconomic dynamics. First, parsimonious models will robustly pick up the short-term momentum in fundamentals but will generally fail to fully capture the long-run mean reversion. Beliefs will therefore be characterized by endogenous extrapolation bias and pro-cyclical excess optimism. Second, asset prices will be highly volatile and exhibit partial mean reversion—i.e., overreaction. Excess returns will be negatively predicted by lagged excess returns, P/E ratios, and consumption growth. Third, real economic activity will have amplified cycles. For example, consumption growth will be negatively auto-correlated in the medium run. Fourth, the equity premium will be large. Agents will perceive that equities are very risky when in fact long-run equity returns will co-vary only weakly with long-run consumption growth. If agents had rational expectations, the equity premium would be close to zero. Fifth, sophisticated agents—i.e., those who are assumed to know the true model—will hold far more equity than investors who use parsimonious models. Moreover, sophisticated agents will follow a counter-cyclical asset allocation policy. These predicted effects are qualitatively confirmed in U.S. data.

Investment Dynamics with Natural Expectations

We study an investment model in which agents have the wrong beliefs about the dynamic properties of fundamentals. Specifically, we assume that agents underestimate the rate of mean reversion. The model exhibits the following six properties: (i) Beliefs are excessively optimistic in good times and excessively pessimistic in bad times. (ii) Asset prices are too volatile. (iii) Excess returns are negatively autocorrelated. (iv) High levels of corporate profits predict negative future excess returns. (v) Real economic activity is excessively volatile; the economy experiences amplified investment cycles. (vi) Corporate profits are positively autocorrelated in the short run and negatively autocorrelated in the medium run. The paper provides an illustrative model of animal spirits, amplified business cycles, and excess volatility.Economic

While the rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was generally successful, there is still no end in sight to their conservatorship

Seven years ago the US government dramatically rescued the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, placing them into conservatorship, a situation that remains ongoing. In new research, W. Scott Frame, Andreas Fuster, Joseph Tracy, and James Vickery, assess the success of the rescue using five criteria. They find that while the agencies were able to support mortgage supply through the crisis and afterwards, the rescue was less successful in supporting the government’s macroeconomic objectives. While there is broad agreement that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be replaced by a private system, there is no end to their conservatorships in sight

What Goes Up Must Come Down? Experimental Evidence on Intuitive Forecasting

Do laboratory subjects correctly perceive the dynamics of a mean-reverting time series? In our experiment, subjects receive historical data and make forecasts at different horizons. The time series process that we use features short-run momentum and long-run partial mean reversion. Half of the subjects see a version of this process in which the momentum and partial mean reversion unfold over ten periods ("fast"), while the other subjects see a version with dynamics that unfold over 50 periods ("slow"). Typical subjects recognize most of the mean reversion of the fast process and none of the mean reversion of the slow process.Economic