IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jfinec/v101y2011i2p333-359.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Labor income dynamics at business-cycle frequencies: Implications for portfolio choice

Author

Listed:
  • Lynch, Anthony W.
  • Tan, Sinan

Abstract

Young agents with low wealth-income ratios counter factually hold more stock than young, rich agents and old agents using the standard portfolio choice model with i.i.d. stock returns and labor income. This paper matches the countercyclical volatility and procyclical mean of U.S. labor income and finds that, consistent with U.S. data, young, poor agents now hold less stock than both young, rich agents and old agents, and no stock a large fraction of the time. Our results suggest that the predictability of labor income growth at a business-cycle frequency, particularly the countercyclical variation in volatility, plays an important role in a young agent's decision making about her portfolio's stock holding.

Suggested Citation

  • Lynch, Anthony W. & Tan, Sinan, 2011. "Labor income dynamics at business-cycle frequencies: Implications for portfolio choice," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 333-359, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfinec:v:101:y:2011:i:2:p:333-359
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304405X11000705
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Merton, Robert C, 1973. "An Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(5), pages 867-887, September.
    2. repec:wsi:qjfxxx:v:03:y:2013:i:03n04:n:s2010139213500110 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. John Y. Campbell & Luis M. Viceira, 1999. "Consumption and Portfolio Decisions when Expected Returns are Time Varying," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 114(2), pages 433-495.
    4. Laurent E. Calvet & John Y. Campbell & Paolo Sodini, 2007. "Down or Out: Assessing the Welfare Costs of Household Investment Mistakes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(5), pages 707-747, October.
    5. Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2002. "Towards an Explanation of Household Portfolio Choice Heterogeneity: Nonfinancial Income and Participation Cost Structures," NBER Working Papers 8884, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Francisco Gomes & Alexander Michaelides, 2003. "Portfolio Choice With Internal Habit Formation: A Life-Cycle Model With Uninsurable Labor Income Risk," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 6(4), pages 729-766, October.
    7. Steven J. Davis & Paul Willen, 2013. "Occupation-Level Income Shocks and Asset Returns: Their Covariance and Implications for Portfolio Choice," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(03n04), pages 1-53.
    8. John Y. Campbell & João F. Cocco, 2003. "Household Risk Management and Optimal Mortgage Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 118(4), pages 1449-1494.
    9. Tauchen, George & Hussey, Robert, 1991. "Quadrature-Based Methods for Obtaining Approximate Solutions to Nonlinear Asset Pricing Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(2), pages 371-396, March.
    10. Valery Polkovnichenko, 2007. "Life-Cycle Portfolio Choice with Additive Habit Formation Preferences and Uninsurable Labor Income Risk," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(1), pages 83-124, January.
    11. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1989. "Business conditions and expected returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 23-49, November.
    12. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Jonathan A. Parker, 2002. "Consumption Over the Life Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 47-89, January.
    13. Joao F. Cocco, 2005. "Consumption and Portfolio Choice over the Life Cycle," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(2), pages 491-533.
    14. Anthony W. Lynch, 2000. "Portfolio Choice and Equity Characteristics: Characterizing the Hedging Demands Induced by Return Predictability," New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires 99-073, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-.
    15. Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde & Dirk Krueger, 2002. "Consumption over the Life Cycle: Some Facts from Consumer Expenditure Survey Data," Centro de Alti­simos Estudios Ri­os Pe©rez(CAERP) 7, Centro de Altisimos Estudios Rios Perez (CAERP).
    16. Francisco Gomes & Alexander Michaelides, 2005. "Optimal Life-Cycle Asset Allocation: Understanding the Empirical Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(2), pages 869-904, April.
    17. Bottazzi, Laura & Pesenti, Paolo & van Wincoop, Eric, 1996. "Wages, profits and the international portfolio puzzle," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 219-254, February.
    18. Balduzzi, Pierluigi & Lynch, Anthony W., 1999. "Transaction costs and predictability: some utility cost calculations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 47-78, April.
    19. Christopher D. Carroll, 1992. "The Buffer-Stock Theory of Saving: Some Macroeconomic Evidence," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 23(2), pages 61-156.
    20. Friend, Irwin & Blume, Marshall E, 1975. "The Demand for Risky Assets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(5), pages 900-922, December.
    21. Heaton, John & Lucas, Deborah, 1997. "Market Frictions, Savings Behavior, And Portfolio Choice," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(01), pages 76-101, January.
    22. Carroll, Christopher D. & Samwick, Andrew A., 1997. "The nature of precautionary wealth," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 41-71, September.
    23. Nicholas Barberis, 2000. "Investing for the Long Run when Returns Are Predictable," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(1), pages 225-264, February.
    24. Heaton, John & Lucas, Deborah, 2000. "Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Background Risk," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(460), pages 1-26, January.
    25. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1988. "Dividend yields and expected stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-25, October.
    26. Fama, Eugene F. & Schwert, G. William, 1977. "Human capital and capital market equilibrium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 95-125, January.
    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. Hammami, Yacine & Lindahl, Anna, 2014. "An intertemporal capital asset pricing model with bank credit growth as a state variable," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 14-28.
    2. John H. Cochrane, 2014. "A Mean-Variance Benchmark for Intertemporal Portfolio Theory," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(1), pages 1-49, February.
    3. Mark Huggett and Greg Kaplan, 2012. "The Money Value of a Man," Working Papers gueconwpa~12-12-02, Georgetown University, Department of Economics.
    4. Wei-Ting Pan, 2016. "The Impact of Mandatory Savings on Life Cycle Consumption and Portfolio Choice," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 32.
    5. Apergis, Nicholas, 2015. "Financial portfolio choice: Do business cycle regimes matter? Panel evidence from international household surveys," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 14-27.
    6. Hui-Ju Tsai & Yangru Wu, 2015. "Optimal portfolio choice with asset return predictability and nontradable labor income," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 215-249, July.
    7. 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.
    8. Christensen, Peter Ove & Larsen, Kasper & Munk, Claus, 2012. "Equilibrium in securities markets with heterogeneous investors and unspanned income risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 1035-1063.
    9. Kraft, Holger & Munk, Claus & Wagner, Sebastian, 2015. "Housing habits and their implications for life-cycle consumption and investment," SAFE Working Paper Series 85, Research Center SAFE - Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe, Goethe University Frankfurt.
    10. Mark Huggett & Greg Kaplan, 2016. "How Large is the Stock Component of Human Capital?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 22, pages 21-51, October.
    11. Kraft, Holger & Munk, Claus & Weiss, Farina, 2016. "Predictors and portfolios over the life cycle," SAFE Working Paper Series 139, Research Center SAFE - Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe, Goethe University Frankfurt.
    12. Fischer, Marcel & Kraft, Holger & Munk, Claus, 2013. "Asset allocation over the life cycle: How much do taxes matter?," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 2217-2240.
    13. Campanale, Claudio & Fugazza, Carolina & Gomes, Francisco J, 2015. "Life-Cycle Portfolio choice with Liquid and Illiquid Assets," CEPR Discussion Papers 10369, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Doriana Ruffino, 2014. "Resuscitating Businessman Risk: A Rationale for Familiarity-Based Portfolios," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 17(1), pages 107-130, January.
    15. repec:pri:cepsud:238kaplan.pdf is not listed on IDEAS
    16. repec:pri:cepsud:238kaplan is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Massimo Guidolin & Stuart Hyde, 2012. "Optimal Portfolios for Occupational Funds under Time-Varying Correlations in Bull and Bear Markets? Assessing the Ex-Post Economic Value," Working Papers 455, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.

    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:eee:jfinec:v:101:y:2011:i:2:p:333-359. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Dana Niculescu). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505576 .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.