IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgfe/2024-97.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Life-Cycle Portfolio Choices and Heterogeneous Stock Market Expectations

Author

Abstract

Survey measurements of households’ expectations about U.S. equity returns show substantial heterogeneity and large departures from the historical distribution of actual returns. The average household perceives a lower probability of positive returns and a greater probability of extreme returns than history has exhibited. I build a life-cycle model of saving and portfolio choices that incorporates beliefs estimated to match these survey measurements of expectations. This modification enables the model to greatly reduce a tension in the literature in which models that have aimed to match risky portfolio investment choices by age have required much higher estimates of the coefficient of relative risk aversion than models that have aimed to match age profiles of wealth. The tension is reduced because beliefs that are more pessimistic than the historical experience reduce people’s willingness to invest in stocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Mateo Velásquez-Giraldo, 2024. "Life-Cycle Portfolio Choices and Heterogeneous Stock Market Expectations," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2024-097, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2024-97
    DOI: 10.17016/FEDS.2024.097
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/files/2024097pap.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17016/FEDS.2024.097?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Steffen Andersen & Kasper Meisner Nielsen, 2011. "Participation Constraints in the Stock Market: Evidence from Unexpected Inheritance Due to Sudden Death," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(5), pages 1667-1697.
    3. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2023. "The Importance of Financial Literacy: Opening a New Field," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 37(4), pages 137-154, Fall.
    4. Calvet, Laurent E. & Campbell, John Y & Gomes, Francisco & Sodini, Paolo, 2021. "The Cross-Section of Household Preferences," CEPR Discussion Papers 16105, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Benjamin Enke & Thomas Graeber & Ryan Oprea & Jeffrey Yang, 2024. "Behavioral Attenuation," NBER Working Papers 32973, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Ingvild Almås & Orazio Attanasio & Pamela Jervis, 2023. "Economics and Measurement: New measures to model decision making," NBER Working Papers 30839, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Andrew Caplin, 2021. "Data Engineering for Cognitive Economics," NBER Working Papers 29378, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Richard Foltyn & Jonna Olsson, 2024. "Subjective life expectancies, time preference heterogeneity, and wealth inequality," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(3), pages 699-736, July.
    3. Duraj, Kamila & Grunow, Daniela & Chaliasos, Michael & Laudenbach, Christine & Siegel, Stephan, 2024. "Rethinking the stock market participation puzzle: A qualitative approach," IMFS Working Paper Series 210, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).
    4. Duraj, Kamila & Grunow, Daniela & Chaliasos, Michael & Laudenbach, Christine & Siegel, Stephan, 2024. "Rethinking the stock market participation puzzle: A qualitative approach," SAFE Working Paper Series 441, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    5. Kraft, Holger & Munk, Claus & Weiss, Farina, 2022. "Bequest motives in consumption-portfolio decisions with recursive utility," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    6. Bairoliya, Neha & McKiernan, Kathleen, 2024. "The welfare costs of misinformation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    7. David Sturrock & Stefan Groot & Jan Möhlmann, 2022. "Wealth, gifts, and estate planning at the end of life," CPB Discussion Paper 442, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    8. Hong, Claire Yurong & Lu, Xiaomeng & Pan, Jun, 2021. "FinTech adoption and household risk-taking," BOFIT Discussion Papers 14/2021, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    9. Jingjing Xu, 2024. "Intergenerational transfers in China: What are the patterns of the transfers and when do the transfers occur?," International Studies of Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(1), pages 117-150, March.
    10. Robson, Matthew & O’Donnell, Owen & Van Ourti, Tom, 2024. "Aversion to health inequality — Pure, income-related and income-caused," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    11. Aydilek, Asiye, 2016. "The allocation of time and puzzling profiles of the elderly," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 515-526.
    12. Goda, Gopi Shah & Manchester, Colleen Flaherty & Sojourner, Aaron J., 2014. "What will my account really be worth? Experimental evidence on how retirement income projections affect saving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 80-92.
    13. Goda, Gopi Shah & Ramnath, Shanthi & Shoven, John B. & Slavov, Sita Nataraj, 2018. "The financial feasibility of delaying Social Security: evidence from administrative tax data," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(4), pages 419-436, October.
    14. Patrick Richard & Regine Walker & Pierre Alexandre, 2018. "The burden of out of pocket costs and medical debt faced by households with chronic health conditions in the United States," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(6), pages 1-13, June.
    15. Eichfelder, Sebastian & Lau, Mona, 2014. "Capital gains taxes and asset prices: The impact of tax awareness and procrastination," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 170, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    16. Ni, Xinwen, 2019. "Voting for Health Insurance Policy: the U.S. versus Europe," IRTG 1792 Discussion Papers 2019-012, Humboldt University of Berlin, International Research Training Group 1792 "High Dimensional Nonstationary Time Series".
    17. Pedro Salas-Rojo & Juan Gabriel Rodríguez, 2022. "Inheritances and wealth inequality: a machine learning approach," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 27-51, March.
    18. Chen, Li-Shiun & Wang, Ping & Yao, Yao, 2018. "Power of personalized smoking cessation: A unified lifecycle framework for policy evaluation," Working Paper Series 20333, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    19. Svetlana Pashchenko & Ponpoje (Poe) Porapakkarm & Mariacristina De Nardi, 2017. "The Lifetime Costs of Bad Health," 2017 Meeting Papers 533, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    20. Kuhn, Michael & Frankovic, Ivan & Wrzaczek, Stefan, 2017. "Medical Progress, Demand for Health Care, and Economic Performance," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168249, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumption and Saving; Heterogeneous Beliefs; Life cycle dynamics; Portfolio choice;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G40 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - General
    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth
    • G53 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Financial Literacy
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • D15 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Intertemporal Household Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedgfe:2024-97. 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: Ryan Wolfslayer ; Keisha Fournillier (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbgvus.html .

    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.