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Rationalizing investors’ choices

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  • Bernard, Carole
  • Chen, Jit Seng
  • Vanduffel, Steven

Abstract

Assuming that agents’ preferences satisfy first-order stochastic dominance, we show how the Expected Utility paradigm can rationalize all optimal investment choices: the optimal investment strategy in any behavioral law-invariant (state-independent) setting corresponds to the optimum for an expected utility maximizer with an explicitly derived concave non-decreasing utility function. This result enables us to infer the utility and risk aversion of agents from their investment choice in a non-parametric way. We relate the property of decreasing absolute risk aversion (DARA) to distributional properties of the terminal wealth and of the financial market. Specifically, we show that DARA is equivalent to a demand for a terminal wealth that has more spread than the opposite of the log pricing kernel at the investment horizon.

Suggested Citation

  • Bernard, Carole & Chen, Jit Seng & Vanduffel, Steven, 2015. "Rationalizing investors’ choices," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 10-23.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:mateco:v:59:y:2015:i:c:p:10-23
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jmateco.2015.05.002
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    4. Jacek B Krawczyk, 2015. "Delivering Left-Skewed Portfolio Payoff Distributions in the Presence of Transaction Costs," Risks, MDPI, vol. 3(3), pages 1-20, August.
    5. Guan, Guohui & Liang, Zongxia & Xia, Yi, 2023. "Optimal management of DC pension fund under the relative performance ratio and VaR constraint," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 305(2), pages 868-886.
    6. Bernard, Carole & De Gennaro Aquino, Luca & Levante, Lucia, 2021. "Optimal annuity demand for general expected utility agents," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(PA), pages 70-79.
    7. Dennis W. Jansen & Liqun Liu, 2022. "Portfolio choice in the model of expected utility with a safety-first component," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 45(1), pages 187-207, June.
    8. Carole Bernard & Massimiliano Caporin & Bertrand Maillet & Xiang Zhang, 2023. "Omega Compatibility: A Meta-analysis," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 62(2), pages 493-526, August.
    9. Carole Bernard & Gero Junike & Thibaut Lux & Steven Vanduffel, 2024. "Cost-efficient payoffs under model ambiguity," Finance and Stochastics, Springer, vol. 28(4), pages 965-997, October.
    10. Nicole Bäuerle & Stefanie Grether, 2015. "Complete markets do not allow free cash flow streams," Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research (GOR);Nederlands Genootschap voor Besliskunde (NGB), vol. 81(2), pages 137-146, April.
    11. Bernard, C. & De Gennaro Aquino, L. & Vanduffel, S., 2023. "Optimal multivariate financial decision making," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(1), pages 468-483.

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