Heterogeneity in Target-Date Funds: Optimal Risk Taking or Risk Matching?

The recent growth in the market for target-date funds (TDFs) allows us to study how mutual fund families structure new investment products. Given the widespread, legislation-induced use of TDFs as default investments in defined contribution retirement plans, this market holds special policy significance. We document pronounced heterogeneity in TDF returns between 1994 and 2009. We find strong evidence that return heterogeneity reflects optimal risk taking by families new to the market, with few assets to lose. We find little evidence that 401(k) plan sponsors match the risk profile of the TDFs in their plans to the risks of their companies.

Mimicking portfolios, economic risk premia, and tests of multi-beta models

This paper considers two alternative formulations of the linear factor model (LFM) with nontraded factors. The first formulation is the traditional LFM, where the estimation of risk premia and alphas is performed by means of a cross-sectional regression of average returns on betas. The second formulation (LFM*) replaces the factors with their projections on the span of excess returns. This formulation requires only time-series regressions for the estimation of risk premia and alphas. We compare the theoretical properties of the two approaches and study the small-sample properties of estimates and test statistics. Our results show that when estimating risk premia and testing multi-beta models, the LFM* formulation should be considered in addition to, or even instead of, the more traditional LFM formulation.

Asset-pricing models and economic risk premia: a decomposition

The risk premia assigned to economic (nontraded) risk factors can be decomposed into three parts: (i) the risk premia on maximum-correlation portfolios mimicking the factors; (ii) (minus) the covariance between the nontraded components of the candidate pricing kernel of a given model and the factors; and (iii) (minus) the mispricing assigned by the candidate pricing kernel to the maximum-correlation mimicking portfolios. The first component is the same across asset-pricing models and is typically estimated with little (absolute) bias and high precision. The second component, on the other hand, is essentially arbitrary and can be estimated with large (absolute) biases and low precisions by multi-beta models with nontraded factors. This second component is also sensitive to the criterion minimized in estimation. The third component is estimated reasonably well, both for models with traded and nontraded factors. We conclude that the economic risk premia assigned by multi-beta models with nontraded factors can be very unreliable. Conversely, the risk premia on maximum-correlation portfolios provide more reliable indications of whether a nontraded risk factor is priced. These results hold for both the constant and the time-varying components of the factor risk premia.

Minimum-variance kernels, economic risk premia, and tests of multi-beta models

This paper uses minimum-variance (MV) admissible kernels to estimate risk premia associated with economic risk variables and to test multi-beta models. Estimating risk premia using MV kernels is appealing because it avoids the need to 1) identify all relevant sources of risk and 2) assume a linear factor model for asset returns. Testing multi-beta models in terms of restricted MV kernels has the advantage that 1) the candidate kernel has the smallest volatility and 2) test statistics are easy to interpret in terms of Sharpe ratios. The authors find that several economic variables command significant risk premia and that the signs of the premia mostly correspond to the effect that these variables have on the risk-return trade-off, consistent with the implications of the intertemporal capital asset pricing model (I-CAPM). They also find that the MV kernel implied by the I-CAPM, while formally rejected by the data, consistently outperforms a pricing kernel based on the size and book-to-market factors of Fama and French (1993).Risk ; Asset pricing ; Econometric models

Stock Returns, Inflation, and the 'Proxy Hypothesis:' A New Look at the Data

This paper reexamines the proxy hypothesis of Fama (American Economic Review, 1981, 71, 545-565) as the main explanation for the negative correlation between stock returns and inflation. We look at quarterly data on industrial-production growth, monetary-base growth, CPI inflation, three-month Treasury-bill rates, and returns on the equally-weighted NYSE portfolio, for the 1954-1976 and 1977-1990 periods. Using time-series techniques, we find that production growth induces only a weak negative correlation between inflation and stock returns, and explains less of the covariance between the two series than inflation and interest-rate innovations

Anatomy of a Sovereign Debt Crisis: CDS Spreads and Real-Time Macroeconomic Data

We construct a unique and comprehensive data set of 19 real-time daily macroeconomic indicators for 11 Eurozone countries, for the 5/11/2009{4/25/2013 period. We use this new data set to characterize the time-varying dependence of the cross-section of sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spreads on country-specific macro indicators. We employ daily Fama-MacBeth type cross-sectional regressions to produce time-series of macro-sensitivities, which are then used to identify risk regimes and forecast future equity market volatility. We document pronounced time-variation in the macro-sensitivities, consistent with the notion that market participants focused on very different macro indicators at the different times of the crisis. Second, we identify three distinct crisis risk regimes, based on the general level of CDS spreads, the macro-sensitivities, and the GIPSI connotation. Third, we document the predictive power of the macro-sensitivities for future option-implied equity market volatility, consistent with the notion that expected future risk aversion is an important driver of how CDS spreads impound macro information.JRC.B.1-Finance and Econom

Money, Transactions, and Portfolio Choice

Real money balances are held separately for consumption and portfolio reasons. When real balances are a state variable in the investor’s optimization problem, there is a specific inflation-hedging portfolio. An investor hedges against inflation when the effect of real money holdings on the marginal utility of wealth is negative. We show that an increase in real balances due to inflation has two opposite effects on the marginal utility of wealth. On the one hand, the decrease in the real balances reduces consumption, which in turn raises the marginal utility and decreases the marginal cost of consuming: this explains why an investor would normally hedge inflation. One the other hand, the decrease in real balances tends to increase the marginal cost of consuming. When this second effect dominates, we have the somewhat surprising result that the investor reverse-hedges inflation

Interest Rate Targeting and the Dynamics of Short-Term Rates

We explore the link between the overnight fed funds rate, which is actively targeted by the Federal Reserve, and longer-maturity term fed funds rates. We develop a term-structure model which explicitly accounts for interest rate targeting and for the predictability of future target changes. The model is able to replicate some qualitative features of the dynamic behavior of deviations of short-term rates from the target