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Asset Pricing with Idiosyncratic Risk and Overlapping Generations

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Author Info
Kjetil Storesletten
Chris Telmer
Amir Yaron

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Abstract

A number of existing studies have concluded that risk sharing allocations supported by competitive, incomplete markets equilibria are quantitatively close to first-best. Equilibrium asset prices in these models have been difficult to distinguish from those associated with a complete markets model, the counterfactual features of which have been widely documented. This paper asks if life cycle considerations, in conjunction with persistent idiosyncratic shocks which become more volatile during aggregate downturns, can reconcile the quantitative properties of the competitive asset pricing framework with those of observed asset returns. We begin by arguing that data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics support the plausibility of such a shock process. Our estimates suggest a high degree of persistence as well as a substantial increase in idiosyncratic conditional volatility coincident with periods of low growth in U.S. GNP. When these factors are incorporated in a stationary overlapping generations framework, the implications for the returns on risky assets are substantial. Plausible parameterizations of our economy are able to generate Sharpe ratios which match those observed in U.S. data. Our economy cannot, however, account for the level of variability of stock returns, owing in large part to the specification of its production technology.

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Paper provided by Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in its series Economics Working Papers with number 405.

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Date of creation: Jun 1996
Date of revision: Jul 1999
Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:405

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Keywords: Finance OLG

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing
E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

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