IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tiu/tiucen/479f7653-9609-4bf4-a593-0ff210983406.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Risk aversion, intertemporal substitution and consumption : The CARA-LQ problem

Author

Listed:
  • van der Ploeg, F.

    (Tilburg University, Center For Economic Research)

Abstract

This paper employs the recursive utility approach, based on quadratic felicity functions and constant absolute risk aversion, to distinguish between risk aversion and intertemporal substitution. Stochastic dynamic programming yields closed-loop linear decision rules for the CARA-LQ problem. Certainty equivalence no longer holds, but instead the decision maker plays a min-max strategy against nature. When applied to a life cycle consumption problem, one finds a rationale for precautionary saving and a larger sensitivity of changes in consumption to income innovations. It is also shown that consumers with Ricardian rationality can display a Keynesian propensity to consume out of a current tax cut.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • van der Ploeg, F., 1989. "Risk aversion, intertemporal substitution and consumption : The CARA-LQ problem," Discussion Paper 1989-53, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:tiu:tiucen:479f7653-9609-4bf4-a593-0ff210983406
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://pure.uvt.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/1145061/FP5620598.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Campbell & Angus Deaton, 1989. "Why is Consumption So Smooth?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(3), pages 357-373.
    2. Stephen P. Zeldes, 1989. "Optimal Consumption with Stochastic Income: Deviations from Certainty Equivalence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(2), pages 275-298.
    3. repec:fth:harver:1421 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Larry G. Epstein & Stanley E. Zin, 2013. "Substitution, risk aversion and the temporal behavior of consumption and asset returns: A theoretical framework," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 12, pages 207-239, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Kreps, David M & Porteus, Evan L, 1979. "Dynamic Choice Theory and Dynamic Programming," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(1), pages 91-100, January.
    6. Kimball, Miles S & Mankiw, N Gregory, 1989. "Precautionary Saving and the Timing of Taxes," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 863-879, August.
    7. A. Sandmo, 1970. "The Effect of Uncertainty on Saving Decisions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 37(3), pages 353-360.
    8. Johnsen, Thore H & Donaldson, John B, 1985. "The Structure of Intertemporal Preferences under Uncertainty and Time Consistent Plans," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1451-1458, November.
    9. Campbell, John Y, 1987. "Does Saving Anticipate Declining Labor Income? An Alternative Test of the Permanent Income Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(6), pages 1249-1273, November.
    10. Alberto Giovannini & Philippe Weil, 1989. "Risk Aversion and Intertemporal Substitution in the Capital Asset Pricing Model," NBER Working Papers 2824, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Selden, Larry, 1978. "A New Representation of Preferences over "Certain A Uncertain" Consumption Pairs: The "Ordinal Certainty Equivalent" Hypothesis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(5), pages 1045-1060, September.
    12. Flavin, Marjorie A, 1981. "The Adjustment of Consumption to Changing Expectations about Future Income," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 974-1009, October.
    13. Barsky, Robert B & Mankiw, N Gregory & Zeldes, Stephen P, 1986. "Ricardian Consumers with Keynesian Propensities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 676-691, September.
    14. Hayne E. Leland, 1968. "Saving and Uncertainty: The Precautionary Demand for Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 82(3), pages 465-473.
    15. Olivier Jean Blanchard & Stanley Fischer, 1989. "Lectures on Macroeconomics," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262022834, December.
    16. Larry Selden, 1979. "An OCE Analysis of the Effect of Uncertainty on Saving under Risk Preference Independence," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 46(1), pages 73-82.
    17. Kreps, David M & Porteus, Evan L, 1978. "Temporal Resolution of Uncertainty and Dynamic Choice Theory," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 185-200, 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. Mark Huggett, 2004. "Precautionary Wealth Accumulation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(3), pages 769-781.

    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. Miles Kimball & Philippe Weil, 2009. "Precautionary Saving and Consumption Smoothing across Time and Possibilities," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(2‐3), pages 245-284, March.
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/8703 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/8704 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Normandin, Michel, 1993. "Épargne de précaution et revenu de travail incertain : un survol de la littérature," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 69(4), pages 347-364, décembre.
    5. Abdelhak S. Senhadji, 2000. "How Significant are Departures from Certainty Equivalence? Some Analytical and Empirical Results," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 3(3), pages 597-617, July.
    6. Daria Pignalosa, 2019. "On the role of the utility function in the estimation of preference parameters," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(4), pages 793-820, November.
    7. Saltari, Enrico & Ticchi, Davide, 2007. "Risk aversion, intertemporal substitution, and the aggregate investment-uncertainty relationship," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 622-648, April.
    8. Wang, Chong & Wang, Neng & Yang, Jinqiang, 2016. "Optimal consumption and savings with stochastic income and recursive utility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 292-331.
    9. Yu-Fu Chen & Hassan Molana, 2022. "Solving the Life-Cycle Model with Labour Income Uncertainty: Some Implications of Income Volatility for Consumption Plan," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 303, Economic Studies, University of Dundee.
    10. AJ A. Bostian & Christoph Heinzel, 2016. "Consumption Smoothing and Precautionary Saving under Recursive Preferences," FOODSECURE Working papers 44, LEI Wageningen UR.
    11. Skinner, Jonathan, 1988. "Risky income, life cycle consumption, and precautionary savings," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 237-255, September.
    12. Lugilde, Alba & Bande, Roberto & Riveiro, Dolores, 2017. "Precautionary Saving: a review of the theory and the evidence," MPRA Paper 77511, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Daria Pignalosa, 2021. "The Euler Equation Approach: Critical Implications of Recent Developments in the Theory of Intertemporal Choice," Bulletin of Political Economy, Bulletin of Political Economy, vol. 15(1), pages 1-43, June.
    14. Langlais, Eric, 1995. "A measure of the sensitivity of saving to interest rate uncertainty with non-expected preferences," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 48(3-4), pages 325-330, June.
    15. Wang, Neng, 2006. "Generalizing the permanent-income hypothesis: Revisiting Friedman's conjecture on consumption," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 737-752, May.
    16. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/8703 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/8703 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Aj A Bostian & Christoph Heinzel, 2020. "Robustness of Inferences in Risk and Time Experiments to Lifecycle Asset Integration," Post-Print hal-03358620, HAL.
    19. Heinzel Christoph & Richard Peter, 2021. "Precautionary motives with multiple instruments," Working Papers SMART 21-09, INRAE UMR SMART.
    20. Diego Nocetti & William T. Smith, 2011. "Precautionary Saving and Endogenous Labor Supply with and without Intertemporal Expected Utility," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(7), pages 1475-1504, October.
    21. Donatella Baiardi & Marco Magnani & Mario Menegatti, 2020. "The theory of precautionary saving: an overview of recent developments," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 513-542, June.
    22. Elmendorf, Douglas W & Kimball, Miles S, 2000. "Taxation of Labor Income and the Demand for Risky Assets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(3), pages 801-833, August.
    23. Lars Peter Hansen & Thomas J Sargent, 2014. "Robust Permanent Income and Pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: UNCERTAINTY WITHIN ECONOMIC MODELS, chapter 3, pages 33-81, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    24. Hahm, Joon-Ho, 1998. "Consumption adjustment to real interest rates: Intertemporal substitution revisited," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 293-320, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumer Choice;

    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:tiu:tiucen:479f7653-9609-4bf4-a593-0ff210983406. 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: Richard Broekman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://center.uvt.nl .

    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.