An Asset Allocation Puzzle
This paper examines popular advice on portfolio allocation among cash, bonds, and stocks. It documents that this advice is inconsistent with the mutual-fund separation theorem, which states that all investors should hold the same composition of risky assets. In contrast to the theorem, popular advisors recommend that aggressive investors hold a lower ratio of bonds to stocks than conservative investors. The paper explores various possible explanations of this puzzle. It concludes that the portfolio recommendations can be explained if popular advisors base their advice on the unconditional distribution of nominal returns. It also finds that the cost of this money illusion is small, as measured by the distance of the recommended portfolios from the mean-variance efficient frontier.
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| Length: | |
| Date of creation: | Sep 1994 |
| Date of revision: | |
| Publication status: | published as American Economic Review, Vol. 87 (March 1997): 181-191. |
| Handle: | RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4857 |
| Note: | AP ME |
| Contact details of provider: | Postal: Phone: 617-868-3900 Web page: http://www.nber.org Email: More information through EDIRC
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References listed on IDEAS
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- Campbell, John Y. & Hentschel, Ludger, 1992.
"No news is good news *1: An asymmetric model of changing volatility in stock returns,"
Journal of Financial Economics,
Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 281-318, June.
- John Y. Campbell & Ludger Hentschel, 1991. "No News is Good News: An Asymmetric Model of Changing Volatility in Stock Returns," NBER Working Papers 3742, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Hentschel, Ludger & Campbell, John, 1992. "No News is Good News: An Asymmetric Model of Changing Volatility in Stock Returns," Scholarly Articles 3220232, Harvard University Department of Economics.
- Campbell, John, 1987.
"Stock Returns and the Term Structure,"
Scholarly Articles
3207699, Harvard University Department of Economics.
- Campbell, John Y., 1987. "Stock returns and the term structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 373-399, June.
- John Y. Campbell, 1985. "Stock Returns and the Term Structure," NBER Working Papers 1626, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Akerlof, George A & Yellen, Janet L, 1985. "Can Small Deviations from Rationality Make Significant Differences to Economic Equilibria?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 708-20, September.
- Shafir, Eldar & Diamond, Peter & Tversky, Amos, 1997. "Money Illusion," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 112(2), pages 341-74, May.
- Merton, Robert C, 1973. "An Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(5), pages 867-87, September.
- Stanley Fischer, 1983. "Investing for the Short and the Long Term," NBER Chapters, in: Financial Aspects of the United States Pension System, pages 153-176 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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