Investment, income, incompleteness

The utility-maximizing consumption and investment strategy of an individual investor receiving an unspanned labor income stream seems impossible to find in closed form and very dificult to find using numerical solution techniques. We suggest an easy procedure for finding a specific, simple, and admissible consumption and investment strategy, which is near-optimal in the sense that the wealthequivalent loss compared to the unknown optimal strategy is very small. We first explain and implement the strategy in a simple setting with constant interest rates, a single risky asset, and an exogenously given income stream, but we also show that the success of the strategy is robust to changes in parameter values, to the introduction of stochastic interest rates, and to endogenous labor supply decisions

Insuring Consumption and Happiness Through Religious Organizations

This paper examines whether involvement with religious organizations insures an individual's stream of consumption and of happiness. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX), we examine whether households who contribute to a religious organization are able to insure their consumption stream against income shocks and find strong insurance effects for whites. Using the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), we examine whether individuals who attend religious services are able to insure their stream of happiness against income shocks and find strong happiness insurance effects for blacks but smaller effects for whites. Overall, our results are consistent with the view that religion provides an alternative form of insurance for both whites and blacks though the mechanism by which religious organizations provide insurance to each of these groups appears to be different.

Rural Income Volatility and Inequality in China

Available data indicates a growing urban-rural income gap (the ratio of mean urban to rural incomes) with a significant increase from around 1.8 in the late 1980's to over 3 today. These estimates do not take into account the higher volatility of rural incomes in China. Current literature based on analyses of rural income volatility in China decomposes poverty into chronic and transient components using longitudinal survey data and assesses the fraction of the Foster, Greer and Thorbecke poverty gap attributable to mean income over time being below the poverty line. Resulting estimates of 40-50 % transient poverty point to the policy conclusion that poverty may be a less serious social problem than it appears in annual data due to rural income volatility. Here we use a direct method instead to adjust rural income for volatility using a certainty equivalent income measure and recompute summary statistics for the distribution of volatility corrected incomes, including the urban-rural income gap on which much of current poverty debate in China focuses. Since an uncertain income stream is worth less in utility terms than a certain income stream we argue that heightened rural volatility increases the effective urban-rural income gap and intensifies not weakens poverty concerns. Using Chinese longitudinal rural survey data for which current decompositions can be replicated, we make adjustments for certainty equivalence of rural household income streams which not only widen the urban-rural income gap in China but also increases other distributional summary statistics. Depending upon values used for the coefficient of relative risk aversion, the measured urban-rural income gap increases by 20-30% using a certainty equivalent measure to adjust rural incomes for volatility. We also conduct similar analyses using consumption data, for which slightly larger increases occur.

Labor Income and the Demand for Long-term Bonds

The riskless nature in real terms of inflation-linked bonds has led to the conclusion that inflation-linked bonds should constitute a substantial part of the optimal investment portfolio of long-term investors.This conclusion is reached in models where investors do not receive labor income during the investment period.Since such an income stream is often indexed with inflation, labor income in itself constitutes an implicit holding of real bonds.As such, the optimal investment in inflation-linked bonds is substantially reduced.By extending recently developed simulation-based techniques, we are able to determine the optimal portfolio choice among inflation-linked bonds, nominal bonds, and stocks for investors endowed with an indexed stream of income.We find that the fraction invested in inflation-linked bonds is much smaller than reported in the literature, the duration of the optimal nominal bond portfolio is lengthened, and the utility gains of having access to inflation-linked bonds are substantially reduced.We investigate as well the robustness of our results to time-variation in bond risk premia, the riskiness of labor income, and correlation between labor income risk and financial risks.We find that especially accounting for time-variation in bond risk premia and correlation between labor income risk and financial risks is important for both optimal portfolios and the utility gains of having access to inflation-linked bonds.inflation linked bonds;optimal lifetime investment;simulation-based portfolio choice

On the Measurement of Long-Term Income Inequality and Income Mobility

This paper proposes a two-step aggregation method for measuring long-term income inequality and income mobility, where mobility is defined as an equalizer of long-term income. The first step consists of aggregating the income stream of each individual into a measure of permanent income, which accounts for the costs associated with income fluctuations and allows for credit market imperfections. The second step aggregates permanent incomes across individuals into measures of social welfare, inequality and mobility. To this end, we employ an axiomatic approach to justify the introduction of a generalized family of rank-dependent measures of inequality, where the distributional weights, as opposed to the Mehran-Yaari family, depend on income shares as well as on population shares. Moreover, a subfamily is shown to be associated with social welfare functions that have intuitively appealing interpretations. Further, the generalized family of inequality measures provides new interpretations of the Gini-coefficient.income inequality, income mobility, social welfare, Gini coefficient, permanent income, credit market, annuity

Dynamic optimal fiscal and monetary policy in a business cycle model with income redistribution

An estimation of an optimal program of distortionary taxes, money growth, and borrowing to finance a stream of expenditures based on a real business cycle model in which distribution issues between the rich and poor play a fundamental role in policy decisions.Business cycles ; Monetary policy ; Income distribution

The unification bonus (malus) in postwall Eastern Germany

This paper presents estimates of the unification bonus for East Germans over the period 1991 to 1998. The unification bonus is defined as the discounted value of the difference between a person?s actual income and his or her counterfactual real income stream forecast for a hypothetical continuation of economic life in a static GDR. The two main issues tackled in this study are the construction of valid deflators for a comparison of real incomes during the transition from a centralized to a market economy and the estimation of plausible counterfactual income streams. Our central result is that 19 percent of East Germans received a present value malus and so can be regarded as unification losers but that the aggregate bonus is ten times the size of the aggregate malus of the sample. --Real income comparison,income distribution and mobility,economies in transition

On the Measurement of Long-Term Income Inequality and Income Mobility

This paper proposes a two-step aggregation method for measuring long-term income inequality and income mobility, where mobility is defined as an equalizer of long-term income. First, the income stream of each individual is aggregated into a measure of permanent income, which accounts for the costs associated with income fluctuations. Consequently, mobility will have an unambiguously positive impact on social welfare in the sense that for two societies that have identical short term income distributions, the social welfare will be greatest for the socie ty which exhibits most mobility. The second step consists of aggregating permanent incomes across individuals into measures of social welfare, inequality and mobility. To this end, we employ an axiomatic approach to justify the introduction of a generalized family of rank-dependent measures of inequality, where the distributional weights, as opposed to the Mehran-Yaari family, depend on income shares as well as on population shares. Moreover, a subfamily is shown to be associated with social welfare functions that have intuitively appealing interpretatio ns. Further, the generalized family of inequality measures provides several new interpretations of the Gini-coefficient. The proposed family of income mobility also proves to encompass standard measures of income mobility, depending on the assumptions made about the interpersonal preferences and the credit market.Income inequality, income mobility, social welfare, the Gini coefficient, permanent income, annuity.

Turning Brass to Muck? A Small Scale Exploration of Charities Use of Charity Bags Collections

The title of this paper is an inversion of the usual cliché of turning muck to brass, which it is arguable that charity bag collections do, by providing an in income for charities for goods that would normally be thrown away. While previous research has highlighted that charity bag collections are becoming an increasingly significant source of income for charities, enabling charities to metaphorically turn muck into brass, research has been rather disparate in its analysis of four main issues highlighted as pertinent to this growth. These are: the frequency of collection requests; the amount of materials collections provide; the amount of commission received by charities from outsourced collections, and the extent of bogus/fraudulent collections. This paper uses data collected over a 12 month period using a convenience sampling method to explore these issues in some empirical detail. The findings particularly suggest in that there are a number of processes through which charities undertake their collections which risks undermining the current and future income from charity bags, and which thereby has the potential to invert the metaphor, and turn what has become muck to brass into brass to muck, thereby losing out on a significant income stream

Sustainable Retirement: A Look At Consumer Desires

This paper examines the findings of the research project, 'Retirement Savings: Drivers and Desires', commissioned by the Investment and Financial Services Association Ltd (IFSA) in 2001. The paper investigates retirement savings decision-making and retirement income product stream choice. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of questionnaire data relating to decision-making and product stream choice and discusses these issues in the context of established research findings about retirement income. The paper consists of five sections. The first is a brief review of the 'Drivers and Desires' research project conducted in 2001. An important theme to emerge from the initial project was that participants reported a high level of risk aversion and a strong desire to obtain the publicly funded age pension. Based on the findings of the initial project, the remaining sections of this paper focuses on consumer preferences, particularly relating to risk aversion and demand for the age pension. The second section focuses on a specific issue emanating from the initial project, specifically the market for annuities. The third section considers retirement income streams in terms of risks to investors. The fourth section carries out a quantitative analysis of consumer preferences toward the identified risks in previous sections, and specifically considers various trade-offs in the decision-making process. The fifth section outlines various policy alternatives and issues for future consideration.