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Risk Aversion, Risk Premia, and the Labor Margin with Generalized Recursive Preferences

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  • Eric Swanson

    (University of California, Irvine)

Abstract

A flexible labor margin allows households to absorb shocks to asset values with changes in hours worked as well as changes in consumption. This ability to absorb shocks along both margins alters the household's attitudes toward risk, as shown by Swanson (2012). In the present paper, I extend that analysis to the case of generalized recursive preferences, as in Epstein and Zin (1989) and Weil (1989), including multiplier preferences, as in Hansen and Sargent (2001). Understanding risk aversion for these preferences is important because they are a primary mechanism being used to bring macroeconomic models into closer agreement with asset prices. Traditional, fixed-labor measures of risk aversion show no stable relationship to the equity premium in a standard macroeconomic model, while the closed-form expressions I derive here match the equity premium closely. (Copyright: Elsevier)

Suggested Citation

  • Eric Swanson, 2018. "Risk Aversion, Risk Premia, and the Labor Margin with Generalized Recursive Preferences," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 28, pages 290-321, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:issued:13-261
    DOI: 10.1016/j.red.2017.10.003
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    risk aversion; Epstein-Zin preferences; multiplier preferences; labor; leisure; asset pricing; DSGE models;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

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