IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2001-11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal portfolio allocation in a world without Treasury securities

Author

Abstract

If current projections of future budget surpluses materialize, investing in Treasury securities--an asset class with which investors have long been familiar--could eventually become a thing of the past. In this paper, I examine the extent to which investors' portfolio allocation decisions are likely to be affected by the retirement of all federal government debt. The analysis suggests only small effects for most investors, especially, as is effectively the case for many institutional investors, when a no short sale constraint is in place. Under such circumstances, highly conservative investors--whose portfolios have risk-return characteristics akin to money market instruments--and very aggressive investors--who hold mostly equities--stand to be the least affected by the removal of Treasuries from the pool of investable assets. The analysis abstracts from indirect beneficial effects on investors from a Treasury debt payoff, such as the potential for greater productivity growth (and faster wealth accumulation) as more resources are freed up for investment in the private sector.

Suggested Citation

  • Antulio N. Bomfim, 2001. "Optimal portfolio allocation in a world without Treasury securities," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2001-11, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2001-11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2001/200111/200111abs.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2001/200111/200111pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hansen, Lars Peter & Jagannathan, Ravi, 1991. "Implications of Security Market Data for Models of Dynamic Economies," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(2), pages 225-262, April.
    2. Mehra, Rajnish & Prescott, Edward C., 1985. "The equity premium: A puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 145-161, March.
    3. Hall, Robert E, 1988. "Intertemporal Substitution in Consumption," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(2), pages 339-357, April.
    4. Friend, Irwin & Blume, Marshall E, 1975. "The Demand for Risky Assets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(5), pages 900-922, December.
    5. Vincent Reinhart & Brian Sack, 2000. "The Economic Consequences of Disappearing Government Debt," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 31(2), pages 163-220.
    6. Grossman, Sanford J. & Shiller, Robert J., 1982. "Consumption correlatedness and risk measurement in economies with non-traded assets and heterogeneous information," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 195-210, July.
    7. Jeffrey A. Frankel, 1985. "Portfolio Crowding-Out, Empirically Estimated," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 100(Supplemen), pages 1041-1065.
    8. William F. Sharpe, 1964. "Capital Asset Prices: A Theory Of Market Equilibrium Under Conditions Of Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 425-442, September.
    9. B. Douglas Bernheim, 1987. "Ricardian Equivalence: An Evaluation of Theory and Evidence," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1987, Volume 2, pages 263-316, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine & Lo, Andrew W., 2000. "Nonparametric risk management and implied risk aversion," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 9-51.
    2. Tu, Teng-Tsai, 1998. "An entropic approach to equity market integration and consumption-based capital asset pricing models," ISU General Staff Papers 1998010108000012895, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    3. Telmer, Chris I. & Zin, Stanley E., 2002. "Prices as factors: Approximate aggregation with incomplete markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 26(7-8), pages 1127-1157, July.
    4. Bernard Dumas, 1993. "Partial- vs general-equilibrium models of the international capital market," Working Papers hal-00610766, HAL.
    5. John Y. Campbell, 2000. "Asset Pricing at the Millennium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1515-1567, August.
    6. 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.
    7. Munk, Claus, 2015. "Financial Asset Pricing Theory," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198716457.
    8. Ravi Bansal, 2007. "Long-run risks and financial markets," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 89(Jul), pages 283-300.
    9. Kris Jacobs, 2001. "Estimating Nonseparable Preference Specifications for Asset Market Participants," CIRANO Working Papers 2001s-12, CIRANO.
    10. Masakatsu Okubo, 2011. "The Intertemporal Elasticity of Substitution: An Analysis Based on Japanese Data," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 78(310), pages 367-390, April.
    11. Syed M. Ahsan & Panagiotis Tsigaris, 2009. "The Efficiency Loss of Capital Income Taxation under Imperfect Loss Offset Provisions," Public Finance Review, , vol. 37(6), pages 710-731, November.
    12. Ravi Kashyap, 2016. "Solving the Equity Risk Premium Puzzle and Inching Towards a Theory of Everything," Papers 1604.04872, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2019.
    13. Sydney Ludvigson, 2008. "The Research Agenda: Sydney Ludvigson on Empirical Evaluation of Economic Theories of Risk Premia," EconomicDynamics Newsletter, Review of Economic Dynamics, vol. 9(2), April.
    14. Julian Thimme, 2017. "Intertemporal Substitution In Consumption: A Literature Review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 226-257, February.
    15. Claudio Campanale & Rui Castro & Gian Luca Clementi, 2010. "Asset Pricing in a Production Economy with Chew-Dekel Preferences," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 13(2), pages 379-402, April.
    16. YiLi Chien & Hanno Lustig, 2010. "The Market Price of Aggregate Risk and the Wealth Distribution," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(4), pages 1596-1650, April.
    17. Scheffel, Eric, 2008. "A Credit-Banking Explanation of the Equity Premium, Term Premium, and Risk-Free Rate Puzzles," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2008/30, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    18. Ferson, Wayne E. & Constantinides, George M., 1991. "Habit persistence and durability in aggregate consumption: Empirical tests," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 199-240, October.
    19. Suresh M. Sundaresan, 2000. "Continuous‐Time Methods in Finance: A Review and an Assessment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1569-1622, August.
    20. Jacobs, Kris, 2000. "Estimating Nonseparable Preference Specifications for Asset Market Participants," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1472, Econometric Society.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Debts; Public; Corporate bonds; Government securities;
    All these keywords.

    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:fip:fedgfe:2001-11. 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: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.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.