IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/gpprii/v46y2021i2d10.1057_s41288-021-00215-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Habit persistence reduces risk aversion

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Gollier

    (University of Toulouse-1 Capitole)

Abstract

How does habit formation affect the dynamic demand for insurance and risky assets? We examine a dynamic portfolio-saving choice problem for two structures of preferences. In the first model, the consumer faces an exogenous path of minimum levels of subsistence over time. In the second model, these levels are subject to habit persistence, i.e. they are increasing in past consumption. We show that adding habit persistence to the initial model substantially reduces the aversion to risk. The intuition is that the positive correlation between current portfolio returns and future levels of subsistence helps time-diversifying risks. This result goes against the widespread idea that habit persistence can resolve the equity premium puzzle.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Gollier, 2021. "Habit persistence reduces risk aversion," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 46(2), pages 214-223, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:gpprii:v:46:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1057_s41288-021-00215-9
    DOI: 10.1057/s41288-021-00215-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41288-021-00215-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41288-021-00215-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. Abel, Andrew B, 1990. "Asset Prices under Habit Formation and Catching Up with the Joneses," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 38-42, May.
    2. Lawrence J. Christiano & Michele Boldrin & Jonas D. M. Fisher, 2001. "Habit Persistence, Asset Returns, and the Business Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 149-166, March.
    3. John Y. Campbell & John Cochrane, 1999. "Force of Habit: A Consumption-Based Explanation of Aggregate Stock Market Behavior," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(2), pages 205-251, April.
    4. Constantinides, George M, 1990. "Habit Formation: A Resolution of the Equity Premium Puzzle," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(3), pages 519-543, June.
    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. Christos I. Giannikos & Georgios Koimisis, 2021. "Equity Premium with Habits, Wealth Inequality and Background Risk," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-15, July.

    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. 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.
    2. Vasilev, Aleksandar, 2018. "Are habits important for the propagation of business cycle fluctuations in Bulgaria?," EconStor Preprints 182501, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    3. Cochrane, John H., 2005. "Financial Markets and the Real Economy," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(1), pages 1-101, July.
    4. Patrick Pintus & Yi Wen, 2013. "Leveraged Borrowing and Boom-Bust Cycles," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(4), pages 617-633, October.
    5. Manuel A. Gómez, 2010. "The welfare cost of external habits: a quantitative assessment," Estudios de Economia, University of Chile, Department of Economics, vol. 37(1 Year 20), pages 5-26, June.
    6. Andreas Hornstein & Harald Uhlig, 2000. "What is the Real Story for Interest Rate Volatility?," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 1(1), pages 43-67, February.
    7. Robert Östling & Erik Lindqvist & David Cesarini & Joseph Briggs, 2016. "Wealth, Portfolio Allocations, and Risk Preference," 2016 Meeting Papers 1089, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Irina Khvostova & Alexander Larin & Anna Novak, 2016. "Euler Equation with Habits and Measurement Errors: Estimates on Russian Micro Data," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 63(4), pages 395-409.
    9. James C. Morley, 2007. "The Slow Adjustment of Aggregate Consumption to Permanent Income," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(2-3), pages 615-638, March.
    10. Been-lon Chen & Yu-shan Hsu, 2009. "Is admiration a source of indeterminacy when the speed of habit formation is finite?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(4), pages 3041-3049.
    11. Morhaim, Lisa & Ulus, Ayşegül Yıldız, 2023. "On history-dependent optimization models: A unified framework to analyze models with habits, satiation and optimal growth," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    12. Christoffel, Kai & Kilponen, Juha & Jaccard, Ivan, 2011. "Government bond risk premia and the cyclicality of fiscal policy," Working Paper Series 1411, European Central Bank.
    13. Yi Wen, 2005. "By force of demand: explaining international comovements and the saving-investment correlation puzzle," Working Papers 2005-043, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    14. Douch, Mohamed & Bouaddi, Mohammed, 2010. "EQUITY Premium Puzzle in a Data-Rich Environment," MPRA Paper 29440, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Hlouskova, Jaroslava & Fortin, Ines & Tsigaris, Panagiotis, 2019. "The consumption–investment decision of a prospect theory household: A two-period model with an endogenous second period reference level," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 93-108.
    16. Liu, Desu, 2012. "Is relative risk aversion constant? A reinterpretation of recent asset allocation findings at the micro level," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 250-252.
    17. Santiago Budría, 2008. "An Exploration of Asset Returns in a Production Economy with Relative Habits," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 36(3), pages 261-274, September.
    18. Jingyi Liu, 2008. "Can a Lucas model with habit generate realistic conditional volatility in exchange rate returns?," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 181, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    19. James M. Nason & Takashi Kano, 2004. "Business Cycle Implications of Habit Formation," Computing in Economics and Finance 2004 175, Society for Computational Economics.
    20. Lior Menzly & Tano Santos & Pietro Veronesi, 2002. "The Time Series of the Cross Section of Asset Prices," NBER Working Papers 9217, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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:pal:gpprii:v:46:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1057_s41288-021-00215-9. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    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.