IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3043.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Labor Supply Flexibility and Portfolio Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Zvi Bodie
  • William Samuelson

Abstract

This paper develops a model showing that people who have flexibility in choosing how much to work will prefer to invest substantially more of their money in risky assets than if they had no such flexibility. Viewed in this way, labor supply flexibility offers insurance against adverse investment outcomes. The model provides support for the conventional wisdom that the young can tolerate more risk in their investment portfolios than the old. The model has other implications for the study of household financial behavior over the life cycle. It implies that households will take account of the value of labor supply flexibility in deciding how much to invest in their own human capital and when to retire. At the macro level it implies that people will have a labor supply response to shocks in the financial markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Zvi Bodie & William Samuelson, 1989. "Labor Supply Flexibility and Portfolio Choice," NBER Working Papers 3043, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3043
    Note: ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3043.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul A. Samuelson, 2011. "Lifetime Portfolio Selection by Dynamic Stochastic Programming," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & Edward O Thorp & William T Ziemba (ed.), THE KELLY CAPITAL GROWTH INVESTMENT CRITERION THEORY and PRACTICE, chapter 31, pages 465-472, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Merton, Robert C, 1969. "Lifetime Portfolio Selection under Uncertainty: The Continuous-Time Case," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 51(3), pages 247-257, August.
    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. Adeline Delavande & Susann Rohwedder, 2011. "Individuals' uncertainty about future social security benefits and portfolio choice," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(3), pages 498-519, April.
    2. John Y. Campbell, 2006. "Household Finance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1553-1604, August.
    3. James M. Poterba & Andrew Samwick, 2001. "Household Portfolio Allocation over the Life Cycle," NBER Chapters, in: Aging Issues in the United States and Japan, pages 65-104, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Hugo Benitez-Silva, 2000. "A Dynamic Model of Labor Supply, Consumption/Saving, and Annuity Decisions under Uncertainty," Department of Economics Working Papers 00-06, Stony Brook University, Department of Economics.
    5. Hugo Benítez-Silva, 2003. "Labor Supply Flexibility and Portfolio Choice: An Empirical Analysis," Working Papers wp056, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    6. Adeline Delavande & Susann Rohwedder, 2011. "Individuals' uncertainty about future social security benefits and portfolio choice," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(3), pages 498-519, April.
    7. Masahiko Egami & Hideki Iwaki, 2007. "An optimal life insurance policy in the investment-consumption problem in an incomplete market," Papers 0801.0195, arXiv.org, revised May 2011.
    8. James M. Poterba & Joshua Rauh & Steven F. Venti & David A. Wise, 2009. "Lifecycle Asset Allocation Strategies and the Distribution of 401(k) Retirement Wealth," NBER Chapters, in: Developments in the Economics of Aging, pages 15-50, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Alan L. Gustman & Olivia S. Mitchell, 1990. "Pensions and the U.S. Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 3331, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. 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.
    11. Hugo Benítez-Silva, 2003. "The Annuity Puzzle Revisited," Working Papers wp055, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.

    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. Andreas Fagereng & Luigi Guiso & Davide Malacrino & Luigi Pistaferri, 2020. "Heterogeneity and Persistence in Returns to Wealth," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(1), pages 115-170, January.
    2. John H. Cochrane, 1999. "New facts in finance," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 23(Q III), pages 36-58.
    3. Mr. Christopher Carroll & Mr. Martin Sommer & Mr. Jiri Slacalek, 2012. "Dissecting Saving Dynamics: Measuring Wealth, Precautionary, and Credit Effects," IMF Working Papers 2012/219, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Montserrat Guillén & Jean Pinquet, 2008. "Long-Term Care: Risk Description of a Spanish Portfolio and Economic Analysis of the Timing of Insurance Purchase," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 33(4), pages 659-672, October.
    5. Zhang, Xili & Zhang, Weiguo & Xiao, Weilin, 2013. "Multi-period portfolio optimization under possibility measures," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 401-408.
    6. Prat, Georges, 2013. "Equity risk premium and time horizon: What do the U.S. secular data say?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 76-88.
    7. Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2000. "Towards an Explanation of Household Portfolio Choice Heterogeneity: Nonfinancial Income and Participation Cost Structures," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1102, Econometric Society.
    8. Penikas, Henry, 2010. "Copula-Models in Foreign Exchange Risk-Management of a Bank," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 17(1), pages 62-87.
    9. Tansel Yilmazer & Angela Lyons, 2010. "Marriage and the Allocation of Assets in Women’s Defined Contribution Plans," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 121-137, June.
    10. Stephen Foerster & Juhani T. Linnainmaa & Brian T. Melzer & Alessandro Previtero, 2017. "Retail Financial Advice: Does One Size Fit All?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(4), pages 1441-1482, August.
    11. repec:idb:brikps:365 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Thorsten Hens & Peter Wöhrmann, 2007. "Strategic asset allocation and market timing: a reinforcement learning approach," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 29(3), pages 369-381, May.
    13. Nicolas Aubert & Thomas Rapp, 2008. "Les salariés actionnaires:pourquoi investissent-ils dans leur entreprise?," Revue Finance Contrôle Stratégie, revues.org, vol. 11(4), pages 87-110, December.
    14. Ilja Boelaars & Roel Mehlkopf, 2018. "Optimal risk-sharing in pension funds when stock and labor markets are co-integrated," DNB Working Papers 595, Netherlands Central Bank, Research Department.
    15. Clemens, Christiane & Soretz, Susanne, 1999. "Konsequenzen des Zins- und Einkommensrisikos auf das wirtschaftliche Wachstum," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-221, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    16. Kihlstrom, Richard, 2009. "Risk aversion and the elasticity of substitution in general dynamic portfolio theory: Consistent planning by forward looking, expected utility maximizing investors," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(9-10), pages 634-663, September.
    17. Simon Lysbjerg Hansen, 2005. "A Malliavin-based Monte-Carlo Approach for Numerical Solution of Stochastic Control Problems: Experiences from Merton's Problem," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 391, Society for Computational Economics.
    18. Charles, Amelie & Darne, Olivier & Kim, Jae, 2016. "Stock Return Predictability: Evaluation based on Prediction Intervals," MPRA Paper 70143, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Ferstl, Robert & Weissensteiner, Alex, 2011. "Asset-liability management under time-varying investment opportunities," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 182-192, January.
    20. Wang, Yuanrong & Aste, Tomaso, 2023. "Dynamic portfolio optimization with inverse covariance clustering," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117701, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    21. Prat, Georges & Uctum, Remzi, 2013. "Modeling the horizon-dependent ex-ante risk premium in the foreign exchange market: Evidence from survey data," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 33-54.

    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:nbr:nberwo:3043. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.