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Evaluating Risky Consumption Paths: The Role of Intertemporal Substitutability

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Author Info
Maurice Obstfeld

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Abstract

In dynamic stochastic welfare comparisons, a failure clearly to distinguish between risk aversion and intertemporal substitutability can result in misleading assessments of the impact of risk aversion on the welfare costs of consumption-risk changes. The problem arises in any setting in which uncertainty is propagated over time, notably, but not exclusively, in economies with stochastic consumption trends. Regardless of the preference setup adopted, an increase in risk aversion amplifies the per-period costs of risks. The weights consumers use to cumulate the per-period costs of risks with persistent effects should, however, depend on intertemporal substitutability as well as on risk aversion. Under time-separable expected-utility preferences, an increase in the period utility function's curvature therefore alters the welfare effect of risk for reasons that in part are unrelated to risk aversion.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Technical Working Papers with number 0120.

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Date of creation: Jan 1995
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberte:0120

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E20 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
D58 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Models

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  1. Hall, Robert E, 1988. "Intertemporal Substitution in Consumption," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(2), pages 339-57, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Kenneth L. Judd, 1991. "Minimum weighted residual methods for solving aggregate growth models," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 49, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
  3. John Y. Campbell & N. Gregory Mankiw, 1989. "Consumption, Income and Interest Rates: Reinterpreting the Time Series Evidence," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1989, Volume 4, pages 185-246 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Kocherlakota, Narayana R, 1990. " Disentangling the Coefficient of Relative Risk Aversion from the Elasticity of Intertemporal Substitution: An Irrelevance Result," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(1), pages 175-90, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Kandel, Shmuel & Stambaugh, Robert F., 1991. "Asset returns and intertemporal preferences," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 39-71, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. R. C. Merton, 1970. "Optimum Consumption and Portfolio Rules in a Continuous-time Model," Working papers 58, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
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  7. Ayse Imrohoroglu & Edward Prescott, 1991. "Seigniorage as a tax: a quantitative evaluation," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, pages 462-482.
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  8. Cole, Harold L. & Obstfeld, Maurice, 1991. "Commodity trade and international risk sharing : How much do financial markets matter?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 3-24, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Dixit, Avinash & Rob, Rafael, 1994. "Risk-sharing, adjustment, and trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3-4), pages 263-287, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Imrohoruglu, Ayse, 1989. "Cost of Business Cycles with Indivisibilities and Liquidity Constraints," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(6), pages 1364-83, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. repec:fth:harver:1435 is not listed on IDEAS
  12. Epstein, Larry G & Zin, Stanley E, 1989. "Substitution, Risk Aversion, and the Temporal Behavior of Consumption and Asset Returns: A Theoretical Framework," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(4), pages 937-69, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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