IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ebl/ecbull/eb-06g00072.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do investors dislike kurtosis?

Author

Listed:
  • Markus Haas

    (University of Munich)

Abstract

We show that decreasing absolute prudence implies kurtosis aversion. The ``proof''' of this relation is usually based on the identification of kurtosis with the fourth centered moment of the return distribution and a Taylor approximation of the utility function. A more sound analysis is required, however, as such heuristic arguments have been shown to be logically flawed.

Suggested Citation

  • Markus Haas, 2007. "Do investors dislike kurtosis?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 7(2), pages 1-9.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-06g00072
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.accessecon.com/pubs/EB/2007/Volume7/EB-06G00072A.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael W. Brandt & Amit Goyal & Pedro Santa-Clara & Jonathan R. Stroud, 2005. "A Simulation Approach to Dynamic Portfolio Choice with an Application to Learning About Return Predictability," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(3), pages 831-873.
    2. Eric Jondeau & Michael Rockinger, 2006. "Optimal Portfolio Allocation under Higher Moments," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 12(1), pages 29-55, January.
    3. Jean, William H, 1980. "The Geometric Mean and Stochastic Dominance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 35(1), pages 151-158, March.
    4. Scott, Robert C & Horvath, Philip A, 1980. "On the Direction of Preference for Moments of Higher Order Than the Variance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 35(4), pages 915-919, September.
    5. Vinod, H. D., 2004. "Ranking mutual funds using unconventional utility theory and stochastic dominance," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 353-377, June.
    6. Hadar, Josef & Russell, William R, 1969. "Rules for Ordering Uncertain Prospects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(1), pages 25-34, March.
    7. Robert F. Dittmar, 2002. "Nonlinear Pricing Kernels, Kurtosis Preference, and Evidence from the Cross Section of Equity Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 369-403, February.
    8. Bawa, Vijay S., 1975. "Optimal rules for ordering uncertain prospects," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 95-121, March.
    9. Mandelbrot, Benoit B, 1972. "Correction of an Error in "The Variation of Certain Speculative Prices" (1963)," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 45(4), pages 542-543, October.
    10. Bertrand Maillet & Emmanuel Jurczenko, 2006. "Multi-moment Asset Allocation and Pricing Models," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-00308990, HAL.
    11. Haim Levy, 1992. "Stochastic Dominance and Expected Utility: Survey and Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(4), pages 555-593, April.
    12. Rothschild, Michael & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1970. "Increasing risk: I. A definition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 225-243, September.
    13. Benoit Mandelbrot, 2015. "The Variation of Certain Speculative Prices," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Anastasios G Malliaris & William T Ziemba (ed.), THE WORLD SCIENTIFIC HANDBOOK OF FUTURES MARKETS, chapter 3, pages 39-78, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    14. Massimo Guidolin & Allan Timmerman, 2005. "Optimal portfolio choice under regime switching, skew and kurtosis preferences," Working Papers 2005-006, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    15. Eric Jondeau & Michael Rockinger, 2005. "Conditional Asset Allocation under Non-Normality: How Costly is the Mean-Variance Criterion?," FAME Research Paper Series rp132, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gulder Kemalbay & C. Murat Ozkut & Ceki Franko, 2011. "Portfolio Selection with Higher Moments: A Polynomial Goal Programming Approach to ISE-30 Index," Istanbul University Econometrics and Statistics e-Journal, Department of Econometrics, Faculty of Economics, Istanbul University, vol. 13(1), pages 41-61, Special I.
    2. Eugenio Peluso & Alain Trannoy, 2012. "Preserving dominance relations through disaggregation: the evil and the saint," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 39(2), pages 633-647, July.
    3. Juliane Proelss & Denis Schweizer, 2014. "Polynomial goal programming and the implicit higher moment preferences of US institutional investors in hedge funds," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 28(1), pages 1-28, February.
    4. Maria Debora Braga & Luigi Riso & Maria Grazia Zoia, 2025. "The Theoretical Properties of Novel Risk-Based Asset Allocation Strategies using Portfolio Volatility and Kurtosis," DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Politica Economica dipe0044, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    5. Li, Yulin & Wald, John K. & Wang, Zijun, 2020. "Sovereign bonds, coskewness, and monetary policy regimes," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    6. Back, Kerry, 2014. "A characterization of the coskewness–cokurtosis pricing model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 219-222.

    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. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:7:y:2007:i:2:p:1-9 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Briec, Walter & Kerstens, Kristiaan, 2010. "Portfolio selection in multidimensional general and partial moment space," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 636-656, April.
    3. Clark, Ephraim & Kassimatis, Konstantinos, 2014. "Exploiting stochastic dominance to generate abnormal stock returns," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 20-38.
    4. Eric Jondeau & Michael Rockinger, 2006. "Optimal Portfolio Allocation under Higher Moments," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 12(1), pages 29-55, January.
    5. Caporin, Massimiliano & Costola, Michele & Jannin, Gregory & Maillet, Bertrand, 2018. "“On the (Ab)use of Omega?”," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 11-33.
    6. Nalpas, Nicolas & Simar, Leopold & Vanhems, Anne, 2016. "Portfolio Selection in a Multi-Input Multi-Output Setting:a Simple Monte-Carlo-FDH Algorithm," LIDAM Discussion Papers ISBA 2016022, Université catholique de Louvain, Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences (ISBA).
    7. Dias, Alexandra, 2016. "The economic value of controlling for large losses in portfolio selection," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 72(S), pages 81-91.
    8. Kaplanski, Guy & Kroll, Yoram, 2002. "VaR Risk Measures versus Traditional Risk Measures: an Analysis and Survey," MPRA Paper 80070, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Unser, Matthias, 2000. "Lower partial moments as measures of perceived risk: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 253-280, June.
    10. Belghitar, Yacine & Clark, Ephraim & Kassimatis, Konstantino, 2011. "The prudential effect of strategic institutional ownership on stock performance," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 191-199, August.
    11. K. Saranya & P. Prasanna, 2014. "Portfolio Selection and Optimization with Higher Moments: Evidence from the Indian Stock Market," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 21(2), pages 133-149, May.
    12. Trino-Manuel Niguez & Ivan Paya & David Peel & Javier Perote, 2013. "Higher-order moments in the theory of diversification and portfolio composition," Working Papers 18297128, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    13. Jang, Jeewon & Kang, Jangkoo, 2017. "An intertemporal CAPM with higher-order moments," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 314-337.
    14. Luca Riccetti, 2013. "A copula–GARCH model for macro asset allocation of a portfolio with commodities," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 1315-1336, June.
    15. Ortobelli, Sergio & Rachev, Svetlozar & Schwartz, Eduardo, 2000. "The Problem of Optimal Asset Allocation with Stable Distributed Returns," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt3zd6q86c, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    16. Kerstens, Kristiaan & Mounir, Amine & Van de Woestyne, Ignace, 2011. "Geometric representation of the mean-variance-skewness portfolio frontier based upon the shortage function," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 210(1), pages 81-94, April.
    17. David Allen & Stephen Satchell & Colin Lizieri, 2024. "Quantifying the non-Gaussian gain," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 25(1), pages 1-18, February.
    18. Haim Levy, 2010. "The CAPM is Alive and Well: A Review and Synthesis," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 16(1), pages 43-71, January.
    19. Eric Jondeau & Michael Rockinger, 2005. "Conditional Asset Allocation under Non-Normality: How Costly is the Mean-Variance Criterion?," FAME Research Paper Series rp132, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    20. Daskalaki, Charoula & Skiadopoulos, George & Topaloglou, Nikolas, 2017. "Diversification benefits of commodities: A stochastic dominance efficiency approach," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 250-269.
    21. Wong, Wing-Keung, 2007. "Stochastic dominance and mean-variance measures of profit and loss for business planning and investment," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 182(2), pages 829-843, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G0 - Financial Economics - - General

    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:ebl:ecbull:eb-06g00072. 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: John P. Conley (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.