IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/dyncon/v38y2014icp65-71.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dynamic asset allocation when bequests are luxury goods

Author

Listed:
  • Ding, Jie
  • Kingston, Geoffrey
  • Purcal, Sachi

Abstract

Luxury bequests impart systematic effects of age to an investor's optimal allocation: the expected percentage allocation to equities rises throughout retirement. When bequests are luxuries the marginal utility of bequests declines more slowly than the marginal utility of consumption. This is essentially lower risk aversion. As a retiree approaches death, her expected remaining lifetime utility is increasingly composed of bequest utility, and thus generates progressively lower risk aversion. A retiree responds by increasingly favoring the higher-return risky asset. Compared to standard preferences, luxury bequests elevate a retiree's average exposure to the risky asset, but the difference is small in early retirement.

Suggested Citation

  • Ding, Jie & Kingston, Geoffrey & Purcal, Sachi, 2014. "Dynamic asset allocation when bequests are luxury goods," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 65-71.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:38:y:2014:i:c:p:65-71
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2013.11.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165188913002194
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jedc.2013.11.004?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard, Scott F., 1975. "Optimal consumption, portfolio and life insurance rules for an uncertain lived individual in a continuous time model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 187-203, June.
    2. Bodie, Zvi & Merton, Robert C. & Samuelson, William F., 1992. "Labor supply flexibility and portfolio choice in a life cycle model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 16(3-4), pages 427-449.
    3. Sethi, Suresh P. & Taksar, Michael I. & Presman, Ernst L., 1992. "Explicit solution of a general consumption/portfolio problem with subsistence consumption and bankruptcy," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 16(3-4), pages 747-768.
    4. Mariacristina De Nardi & Eric French & John B. Jones, 2010. "Why Do the Elderly Save? The Role of Medical Expenses," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(1), pages 39-75, February.
    5. Merton, Robert C., 1971. "Optimum consumption and portfolio rules in a continuous-time model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 373-413, December.
    6. Cox, John C. & Ross, Stephen A., 1976. "The valuation of options for alternative stochastic processes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(1-2), pages 145-166.
    7. Karen E. Dynan & Jonathan Skinner & Stephen P. Zeldes, 2002. "The Importance of Bequests and Life-Cycle Saving in Capital Accumulation: A New Answer," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 274-278, May.
    8. Jessica A. Wachter & Motohiro Yogo, 2010. "Why Do Household Portfolio Shares Rise in Wealth?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(11), pages 3929-3965, November.
    9. A. B. Atkinson, 1971. "Capital Taxes, the Redistribution of Wealth and Individual Savings," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 209-227.
    10. Paul Menchik, 1980. "The Importance of Material Inheritance: The Financial Link between Generations," NBER Chapters, in: Modeling the Distribution and Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth, pages 159-186, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. James B. Davies, 1982. "The Relative Impact of Inheritance and Other Factors on Economic Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 97(3), pages 471-498.
    12. Cox, John C. & Huang, Chi-fu, 1989. "Optimal consumption and portfolio policies when asset prices follow a diffusion process," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 33-83, October.
    13. Black, Fischer & Perold, AndreF., 1992. "Theory of constant proportion portfolio insurance," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 16(3-4), pages 403-426.
    14. Lee Lockwood, 2012. "Bequest Motives and the Annuity Puzzle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 15(2), pages 226-243, April.
    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. Jinhui Zhang & Sachi Purcal & Jiaqin Wei, 2017. "Optimal Time to Enter a Retirement Village," Risks, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-20, March.
    2. Johan G. Andréasson & Pavel V. Shevchenko, 2017. "Assessment of Policy Changes to Means-Tested Age Pension Using the Expected Utility Model: Implication for Decisions in Retirement," Risks, MDPI, vol. 5(3), pages 1-21, September.
    3. Fedor Iskhakov & Susan Thorp & Hazel Bateman, 2015. "Optimal Annuity Purchases for Australian Retirees," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 91(293), pages 139-154, June.
    4. Geoffrey Kingston & Susan Thorp, 2019. "Superannuation in Australia: A Survey of the Literature," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 95(308), pages 141-160, March.
    5. Hazel Bateman & Christine Eckert & Fedor Iskhakov & Jordan Louviere & Stephen Satchell & Susan Thorp, 2017. "Default and naive diversification heuristics in annuity choice," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 42(1), pages 32-57, February.
    6. Andréasson, Johan G. & Shevchenko, Pavel V. & Novikov, Alex, 2017. "Optimal consumption, investment and housing with means-tested public pension in retirement," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 32-47.
    7. Wei-Ting Pan, 2016. "The Impact of Mandatory Savings on Life Cycle Consumption and Portfolio Choice," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 32, July-Dece.
    8. Johan G. Andreasson & Pavel V. Shevchenko & Alex Novikov, 2016. "Optimal Consumption, Investment and Housing with Means-tested Public Pension in Retirement," Papers 1606.08984, arXiv.org.
    9. Wen Chen & Nicolas Langren'e, 2020. "Deep neural network for optimal retirement consumption in defined contribution pension system," Papers 2007.09911, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2020.
    10. Choi, Sungsub & Kim, Sungjun & Shim, Gyoocheol, 2016. "Effect of lifetime uncertainty on consumption/investment with luxury bequest motives," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 275-279.
    11. Johan G. Andreasson & Pavel V. Shevchenko, 2016. "The 2015-2017 policy changes to the means-tests of Australian Age Pension: implication to decisions in retirement," Papers 1611.08330, arXiv.org.
    12. Geoffrey Kingston & Lance Fisher, 2014. "Down the Retirement Risk Zone with Gun and Camera," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 33(2), pages 153-162, June.
    13. Hyeng Keun Koo & Kum-Hwan Roh & Yong Hyun Shin, 2021. "Optimal consumption/investment and retirement with necessities and luxuries," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 94(2), pages 281-317, October.
    14. Shao, Adam W. & Chen, Hua & Sherris, Michael, 2019. "To borrow or insure? Long term care costs and the impact of housing," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 15-34.
    15. Zhang, Jinhui & Purcal, Sachi & Wei, Jiaqin, 2021. "Optimal life insurance and annuity demand under hyperbolic discounting when bequests are luxury goods," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(PA), pages 80-90.
    16. Wen Chen & Nicolas Langrené, 2020. "Deep neural network for optimal retirement consumption in defined contribution pension system [Réseau de neurones profond pour consommation à la retraite optimale en système de retraite à cotisatio," Working Papers hal-02909818, HAL.
    17. Wei-Ting Pan, 2016. "The Impact of Mandatory Savings on Life Cycle Consumption and Portfolio Choice," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 2-2016, January-A.

    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. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    2. Holger Kraft & Claus Munk & Sebastian Wagner, 2018. "Housing Habits and Their Implications for Life-Cycle Consumption and Investment [The evolution of homeownership rates in selected OECD countries: demographic and public policy influences]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(5), pages 1737-1762.
    3. Zhang, Jinhui & Purcal, Sachi & Wei, Jiaqin, 2021. "Optimal life insurance and annuity demand under hyperbolic discounting when bequests are luxury goods," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(PA), pages 80-90.
    4. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    5. Schendel, Lorenz S., 2014. "Consumption-investment problems with stochastic mortality risk," SAFE Working Paper Series 43, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    6. Russell Cooper & Guozhong Zhu, 2016. "Household Finance over the Life-Cycle: What does Education Contribute?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 20, pages 63-89, April.
    7. Wei-Ting Pan, 2016. "The Impact of Mandatory Savings on Life Cycle Consumption and Portfolio Choice," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 2-2016, January-A.
    8. Francesco Menoncin & Olivier Scaillet, 2003. "Mortality Risk and Real Optimal Asset Allocation for Pension Funds," FAME Research Paper Series rp101, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    9. Arandjelović, Aleksandar & Kingston, Geoffrey & Shevchenko, Pavel V., 2023. "Life cycle insurance, bequest motives and annuity loads," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    10. Kaschützke, B. & Maurer, R., 2016. "Investing and Portfolio Allocation for Retirement," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 567-608, Elsevier.
    11. Kraft, Holger & Munk, Claus & Weiss, Farina, 2022. "Bequest motives in consumption-portfolio decisions with recursive utility," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    12. Wei-Ting Pan, 2016. "The Impact of Mandatory Savings on Life Cycle Consumption and Portfolio Choice," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 32, July-Dece.
    13. Weidong Tian & Zimu Zhu, 2022. "A portfolio choice problem under risk capacity constraint," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 285-326, September.
    14. Aleksandar Arandjelovi'c & Geoffrey Kingston & Pavel V. Shevchenko, 2023. "Life cycle insurance, bequest motives and annuity loads," Papers 2310.06274, arXiv.org.
    15. Auffret, Philippe, 2001. "An alternative unifying measure of welfare gains from risk-sharing," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2676, The World Bank.
    16. Robert Östling & Erik Lindqvist & David Cesarini & Joseph Briggs, 2016. "Wealth, Portfolio Allocations, and Risk Preference," 2016 Meeting Papers 1089, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Horneff, Wolfram J. & Maurer, Raimond H. & Stamos, Michael Z., 2008. "Life-cycle asset allocation with annuity markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 32(11), pages 3590-3612, November.
    18. Mariacristina De Nardi & Eric French & John Bailey Jones, 2016. "Savings After Retirement: A Survey," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 177-204, October.
    19. Carolina Achury & Sylwia Hubar & Christos Koulovatianos, 2012. "Saving Rates and Portfolio Choice with Subsistence Consumption," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 15(1), pages 108-126, January.
    20. Schwartz, Eduardo S & Tebaldi, Claudio, 2004. "Illiquid Assets and Optimal Portfolio Choice," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt7q65t12x, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bequests; Luxury goods; Dynamic asset allocation; Merton portfolio problem; European put option; Retirement risk zone;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    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:eee:dyncon:v:38:y:2014:i:c:p:65-71. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jedc .

    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.