IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ver/wpaper/15-2011.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Household Portfolios and Risk Bearing over Age and Time

Author

Listed:
  • Alessandro Bucciol

    (Department of Economics (University of Verona))

  • Raffaele Miniaci

    (University of Brescia)

Abstract

We exploit the US Survey of Consumer Finances from 1998 to 2007 to study households’ portfolio risk bearing. We compare four alternative measures of risk, two based on a financial portfolio and two based on a broader portfolio also including – as illiquid assets – human capital, real estate, business wealth and related debt. The measures provide a different ranking of household risk bearing, but they consistently show that risk bearing fell after 2001, and it positively correlates with wealth, income and financial sophistication. Furthermore, the risk-age profile is sensitive to the definition of portfolio, although it looks flat for many years.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandro Bucciol & Raffaele Miniaci, 2011. "Household Portfolios and Risk Bearing over Age and Time," Working Papers 15/2011, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ver:wpaper:15/2011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dse.univr.it//workingpapers/riskbearing.pdf
    File Function: First version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Claudia R. Sahm, 2012. "How Much Does Risk Tolerance Change?," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 2(04), pages 1-38.
    2. Laurent E. Calvet & John Y. Campbell & Paolo Sodini, 2009. "Fight or Flight? Portfolio Rebalancing by Individual Investors," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 301-348.
    3. Yannis Bilias & Dimitris Georgarakos & Michael Haliassos, 2010. "Portfolio Inertia and Stock Market Fluctuations," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(4), pages 715-742, June.
    4. Lusardi, Annamaria & Mitchell, Olivia S., 2007. "Baby Boomer retirement security: The roles of planning, financial literacy, and housing wealth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 205-224, January.
    5. Robert E. Lipsey & Helen Stone Tice, 1989. "The Measurement of Saving, Investment, and Wealth," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number lips89-1, March.
    6. James Banks & Richard Blundell & Zoe Oldfield & James P. Smith, 2010. "Housing Mobility and Downsizing at Older Ages in Britain and the United States," Working Papers WR-787, RAND Corporation.
    7. Pelizzon, Loriana & Weber, Guglielmo, 2008. "Are Household Portfolios Efficient? an Analysis Conditional on Housing," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 43(2), pages 401-431, June.
    8. Jessica A. Wachter & Motohiro Yogo, 2010. "Why Do Household Portfolio Shares Rise in Wealth?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(11), pages 3929-3965, November.
    9. Alessandro Bucciol & Raffaele Miniaci, 2011. "Household Portfolios and Implicit Risk Preference," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(4), pages 1235-1250, November.
    10. McInish, Thomas H., 1982. "Individual investors and risk-taking," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 125-136, June.
    11. Sule Alan, 2006. "Entry Costs and Stock Market Participation over the Life Cycle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(4), pages 588-611, October.
    12. James M. Poterba & Andrew Samwick, 2001. "Household Portfolio Allocation over the Life Cycle," NBER Chapters, in: Aging Issues in the United States and Japan, pages 65-104, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Stefan Nagel, 2006. "Do Wealth Fluctuations Generate Time-varying Risk Aversion? Micro-Evidence on Individuals' Asset Allocation," NBER Working Papers 12809, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Palsson, Anne-Marie, 1996. "Does the degree of relative risk aversion vary with household characteristics?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 17(6), pages 771-787, December.
    15. Nancy Ammon Jianakoplos & Alexandra Bernasek, 2006. "Financial Risk Taking by Age and Birth Cohort," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(4), pages 981-1001, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guiso, Luigi & Sodini, Paolo, 2013. "Household Finance: An Emerging Field," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1397-1532, Elsevier.
    2. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    3. Alessandro Bucciol & Raffaele Miniaci, 2011. "Household Portfolios and Implicit Risk Preference," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(4), pages 1235-1250, November.
    4. Zhou, Jie, 2020. "Household stock market participation during the great financial crisis," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 265-275.
    5. Robert Östling & Erik Lindqvist & David Cesarini & Joseph Briggs, 2016. "Wealth, Portfolio Allocations, and Risk Preference," 2016 Meeting Papers 1089, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Tracey West & Andrew Worthington, 2014. "Macroeconomic Conditions and Australian Financial Risk Attitudes, 2001–2010," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 35(2), pages 263-277, June.
    7. Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli, 2020. "Investment in Financial Information and Portfolio Performance," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 87(348), pages 1133-1170, October.
    8. Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola & Haliassos, Michael, 2021. "Participation following sudden access," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 671-688.
    9. Stamatios Tsigos & Kevin Daly, 2016. "“Fair go” for all? Wealth and Risk Aversion of Australian Households," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(3), pages 274-300, September.
    10. Gust, Christopher & López-Salido, David, 2014. "Monetary policy and the cyclicality of risk," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 59-75.
    11. Jie Zhou, 2015. "Household Stockholding Behavior During the Great Financial Crisis," Staff Working Papers 15-15, Bank of Canada.
    12. Campanale, Claudio & Fugazza, Carolina & Gomes, Francisco, 2015. "Life-cycle portfolio choice with liquid and illiquid financial assets," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 67-83.
    13. Russell Cooper & Guozhong Zhu, 2016. "Household Finance over the Life-Cycle: What does Education Contribute?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 20, pages 63-89, April.
    14. Korniotis, George & Bonaparte, Yosef & Kumar, Alok, 2020. "Income Risk and Stock Market Entry/Exit Decisions," CEPR Discussion Papers 15370, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Christopher J. Gust & J. David López-Salido, 2009. "Portfolio inertia and the equity premium," International Finance Discussion Papers 984, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    16. Brooks, Chris & Sangiorgi, Ivan & Hillenbrand, Carola & Money, Kevin, 2018. "Why are older investors less willing to take financial risks?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 52-72.
    17. Agostino Capponi & Zhaoyu Zhang, 2020. "Risk Preferences and Efficiency of Household Portfolios," Papers 2010.13928, arXiv.org.
    18. Congmin Peng & Po-Wen She & Ming-Kun Lin, 2022. "Financial Literacy and Portfolio Diversity in China," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 452-465, September.
    19. Ran Gu & Cameron Peng & Weilong Zhang, 2021. "The gender gap in household bargaining power: a portfolio-choice approach," IFS Working Papers W21/11, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    20. Rong-Wei Chu & Jun Nie & Bei Zhang, 2014. "Wealth distribution with state-dependent risk aversion," Research Working Paper RWP 13-9, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    household finance; risk bearing; background risk; real estate; human capital;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ver:wpaper:15/2011. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael Reiter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isverit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.