We determine optimal consumption paths under a series of returns scenarios for charitable endowments with distinct tastes over investment risk and inter-temporal substitution. Charities typically prefer smooth consumption paths but are investment-risk tolerant. Using a recursive, Kreps-Porteus utility function, we model the optimal disbursement from an infinitely-lived charitable trust, then, allowing a general form for the returns density, we apply stochastic dominance relations to estimate income/substitution effects whereby a change in future returns influences the current consumption rate. The elasticity of intertemporal substitution rather than risk aversion is key: optimal consumption rises or falls as the elasticity diverges from one.
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Paper provided by Quantitative Finance Research Centre, University of Technology, Sydney in its series Research Paper Series with number
209.
References listed on IDEAS 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.:
David Backus & Bryan Routledge & Stanley Zin, 2004.
"Exotic Preferences for Macroeconomists,"
Working Papers
04-20, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
[Downloadable!]
Other versions:
David K. Backus & Bryan R. Routledge & Stanley E. Zin, 2005.
"Exotic Preferences for Macroeconomists,"
NBER Chapters,
in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2004, Volume 19, pages 319-414
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!]