IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/rbnkwp/0243.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Equilibrium asset prices and the wealth distribution with inattentive consumers

Author

Listed:
  • Finocchiaro, Daria

    (Research Department, Central Bank of Sweden)

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of heterogeneity in planning propensity on wealth inequality and asset prices. I consider an economy populated by "attentive" and "inattentive" agents. Attentive agents plan their consumption period by period, while inattentive agents plan every other period. Infrequent planning increases uncertainty concerning future income or future asset returns. In general equilibrium, inattentive consumers trade at unfavorable prices. If the only source of uncertainty is future income, inattentive consumers will still accumulate more wealth. In contrast, in a version of the model driven by uncertain asset returns, infrequent planning produces the opposite result: inattentive investors accumulate less wealth, in line with empirical evidence. Moreover, asset prices are much more volatile than in a representative agent model with full attention, because changes in asset prices must induce attentive consumers to voluntarily bear the burden of adjusting to aggregate shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Finocchiaro, Daria, 2010. "Equilibrium asset prices and the wealth distribution with inattentive consumers," Working Paper Series 243, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
  • Handle: RePEc:hhs:rbnkwp:0243
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.riksbank.com/upload/WorkingPapers/WP243.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1978. "Asset Prices in an Exchange Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1429-1445, November.
    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. Smoluk, H. J. & Neveu, Raymond P., 2002. "Consumption and asset prices: An analysis across income groups," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 47-62.
    2. Yariv, Leeat & Jackson, Matthew O., 2018. "The Non-Existence of Representative Agents," CEPR Discussion Papers 13397, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Emilio Espino & Thomas Hintermaier, 2009. "Asset trading volume in a production economy," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 39(2), pages 231-258, May.
    4. Jie Ning & Matthew J. Sobel, 2018. "Production and Capacity Management with Internal Financing," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 20(1), pages 147-160, February.
    5. Thomas Delcey, 2019. "Samuelson vs Fama on the Efficient Market Hypothesis: The Point of View of Expertise [Samuelson vs Fama sur l’efficience informationnelle des marchés financiers : le point de vue de l’expertise]," Post-Print hal-01618347, HAL.
    6. Michal Pakos & Hui Chen, 2008. "Asset Pricing with Uncertainty About the Long Run," 2008 Meeting Papers 295, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Giorgio Canarella & Luis A. Gil-Alana & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller, 2022. "Globalization, long memory, and real interest rate convergence: a historical perspective," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(5), pages 2331-2355, November.
    8. René Garcia & Richard Luger & Eric Renault, 2000. "Asymmetric Smiles, Leverage Effects and Structural Parameters," Working Papers 2000-57, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    9. Sumru Altug, 2004. "Lecture Notes on Macroeconomics," Working Papers 2004/18, Turkish Economic Association.
    10. Dietz, Simon & Gollier, Christian & Kessler, Louise, 2018. "The climate beta," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 258-274.
    11. Bekaert, Geert & Engstrom, Eric & Grenadier, Steven R., 2010. "Stock and bond returns with Moody Investors," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 867-894, December.
    12. Abel, Andrew B, 1990. "Asset Prices under Habit Formation and Catching Up with the Joneses," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 38-42, May.
    13. repec:ers:journl:v:xxiv:y:2021:i:4:p:370-395 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. repec:dau:papers:123456789/2514 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Ravi Bansal, 2007. "Long-run risks and financial markets," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 89(Jul), pages 283-300.
    16. Christian Schoder, 2014. "The fundamentals of sovereign debt sustainability: evidence from 15 OECD countries," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 41(2), pages 247-271, May.
    17. Kris Jacobs, 2001. "Estimating Nonseparable Preference Specifications for Asset Market Participants," CIRANO Working Papers 2001s-12, CIRANO.
    18. Fernando Alvarez & Andrew Atkeson & Patrick J. Kehoe, 2002. "Money, Interest Rates, and Exchange Rates with Endogenously Segmented Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(1), pages 73-112, February.
    19. Geert Bekaert & Seonghoon Cho & Antonio Moreno, 2010. "New Keynesian Macroeconomics and the Term Structure," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(1), pages 33-62, February.
    20. Yang, Qing-Qing & Ching, Wai-Ki & Gu, Jia-Wen & Siu, Tak-Kuen, 2018. "Market-making strategy with asymmetric information and regime-switching," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 408-433.
    21. Angelo Aspris & Ester Félez‐Viñas & Sean Foley & Hamish Malloch & Jiri Svec, 2024. "The market risk premium in Australia: Forward‐looking evidence from the options market," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 64(4), pages 3951-3972, December.
    22. Robert F. Whitelaw, 1997. "Time-Varying Sharpe Ratios and Market Timing," New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires 98-074, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inattentiveness; Infrequent Planning; Heterogeneous Agents;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D52 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Incomplete Markets
    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

    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:hhs:rbnkwp:0243. 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: Lena Löfgren (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rbgovse.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.