IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/mathfi/v1y1991i1p100-124.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Risk‐Aversion Behavior In Consumption/Investment Problems1

Author

Listed:
  • E. Presman
  • S. Sethi

Abstract

In this paper, we study the risk‐aversion behavior of an agent in the dynamic framework of consumption/investment decision making that allows the possibility of bankruptcy. Agent's consumption utility is assumed to be represented by a strictly increasing, strictly concave, continuously differentiable function in the general case and by a HARA‐type function in the special case treated in the paper. Coefficients of absolute and relative risk aversion are defined to be the well‐known curvature measures associated with the derived utility of wealth obtained as the value function of the agent's optimization problem. Through an analysis of these coefficients, we show how the change in agent's risk aversion as his wealth changes depends on his consumption utility and the other problem parameters, including the payment at bankruptcy. Moreover, in the HARA case, we can conclude that the agent's relative risk aversion is nondecreasing with wealth, while his absolute risk aversion is decreasing with wealth only if he is sufficiently wealthy. At lower wealth levels, however, the agent's absolute risk aversion may increase with wealth in some cases.

Suggested Citation

  • E. Presman & S. Sethi, 1991. "Risk‐Aversion Behavior In Consumption/Investment Problems1," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(1), pages 100-124, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:mathfi:v:1:y:1991:i:1:p:100-124
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9965.1991.tb00005.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9965.1991.tb00005.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-9965.1991.tb00005.x?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
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roy S., 1996. "Theory of dynamic portfolio choice for survival under uncertainty," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 61-62, February.
    2. Masao Ogaki & Qiang Zhang, 2000. "Risk Sharing in Village India: the Rule of Decreasing Relative Risk Aversion," Working Papers 00-02, Ohio State University, Department of Economics.
    3. Hojgaard, Bjarne & Taksar, Michael, 1998. "Optimal proportional reinsurance policies for diffusion models with transaction costs," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 41-51, May.
    4. Monique Jeanblanc & Peter Lakner & Ashay Kadam, 2004. "Optimal Bankruptcy Time and Consumption/Investment Policies on an Infinite Horizon with a Continuous Debt Repayment Until Bankruptcy," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 29(3), pages 649-671, August.
    5. Presman, E. & Sethi, S., 1996. "Distribution of bankruptcy time in a consumption/portfolio problem," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-3), pages 471-477.

    More about this item

    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:bla:mathfi:v:1:y:1991:i:1:p:100-124. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0960-1627 .

    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.