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Do Wealth Fluctuations Generate Time-varying Risk Aversion? Micro-Evidence on Individuals' Asset Allocation

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Markus K. Brunnermeier
Stefan Nagel

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Abstract

We use data from the PSID to investigate how households' portfolio allocations change in response to wealth fluctuations. Persistent habits, consumption commitments, and subsistence levels can generate time-varying risk aversion with the consequence that when the level of liquid wealth changes, the proportion a household invests in risky assets should also change in the same direction. In contrast, our analysis shows that the share of liquid assets that households invest in risky assets is not affected by wealth changes. Instead, one of the major drivers of households' portfolio allocation seems to be inertia: households rebalance only very slowly following inflows and outflows or capital gains and losses.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 12809.

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Date of creation: Dec 2006
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12809

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G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Hui Guo & Zijun Wang & Jian Yang, 2006. "Does aggregate relative risk aversion change countercyclically over time? evidence from the stock market," Working Papers 2006-047, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. [Downloadable!]
  2. Ricardo M. Sousa, 2007. "Wealth Shocks and Risk Aversion," NIPE Working Papers 28/2007, NIPE - Universidade do Minho. [Downloadable!]
  3. Malcolm Baker & Stefan Nagel & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2006. "The Effect of Dividends on Consumption," NBER Working Papers 12288, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  4. Bilias, Yannis & Georgarakos, Dimitris & Haliassos, Michalis, 2009. "Portfolio Inertia and Stock Market Fluctuations," CEPR Discussion Papers 7239, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Claudia R. Sahm, 2007. "Stability of risk preference," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2007-66, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
  6. Pierre-André Chiappori & Monica Paiella, 2008. "Relative Risk Aversion Is Constant: Evidence from Panel Data," Discussion Papers 5_2008, D.E.S. (Department of Economic Studies), University of Naples "Parthenope", Italy. [Downloadable!]
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