IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/4857.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Asset Allocation Puzzle

Author

Listed:
  • Niko Canner
  • N. Gregory Mankiw
  • David N. Weil

Abstract

This paper examines popular advice on portfolio allocation among cash, bonds, and stocks. It documents that this advice is inconsistent with the mutual-fund separation theorem, which states that all investors should hold the same composition of risky assets. In contrast to the theorem, popular advisors recommend that aggressive investors hold a lower ratio of bonds to stocks than conservative investors. The paper explores various possible explanations of this puzzle. It concludes that the portfolio recommendations can be explained if popular advisors base their advice on the unconditional distribution of nominal returns. It also finds that the cost of this money illusion is small, as measured by the distance of the recommended portfolios from the mean-variance efficient frontier.

Suggested Citation

  • Niko Canner & N. Gregory Mankiw & David N. Weil, 1994. "An Asset Allocation Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 4857, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4857
    Note: AP ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w4857.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Campbell, John Y. & Hentschel, Ludger, 1992. "No news is good news *1: An asymmetric model of changing volatility in stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 281-318, June.
    2. Stanley Fischer, 1983. "Investing for the Short and the Long Term," NBER Chapters, in: Financial Aspects of the United States Pension System, pages 153-176, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Eldar Shafir & Peter Diamond & Amos Tversky, 1997. "Money Illusion," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 341-374.
    4. Campbell, John Y., 1987. "Stock returns and the term structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 373-399, June.
    5. Merton, Robert C, 1973. "An Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(5), pages 867-887, September.
    6. Akerlof, George A & Yellen, Janet L, 1985. "Can Small Deviations from Rationality Make Significant Differences to Economic Equilibria?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 708-720, September.
    7. William F. Sharpe, 1964. "Capital Asset Prices: A Theory Of Market Equilibrium Under Conditions Of Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 425-442, September.
    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. Madhusudan Karmakar, 2007. "Asymmetric Volatility and Risk-return Relationship in the Indian Stock Market," South Asia Economic Journal, Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, vol. 8(1), pages 99-116, January.
    2. Kamaldeen Ibraheem Nageri & Azeez Tunbosun Lawal & Falilat Ajoke Abdul, 2019. "Risk - Return Relationship: Nigerian Stock Market during Pre and Post 2007-2009 Financial Meltdown," Academic Journal of Economic Studies, Faculty of Finance, Banking and Accountancy Bucharest,"Dimitrie Cantemir" Christian University Bucharest, vol. 5(2), pages 52-62, June.
    3. Jennie Bai & Turan G. Bali & Quan Wen, 2019. "Is There a Risk-Return Tradeoff in the Corporate Bond Market? Time-Series and Cross-Sectional Evidence," NBER Working Papers 25995, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Christensen, Bent Jesper & Dahl, Christian M. & Iglesias, Emma M., 2012. "Semiparametric inference in a GARCH-in-mean model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 167(2), pages 458-472.
    5. Keunbae Ahn, 2021. "Predictable Fluctuations in the Cross-Section and Time-Series of Asset Prices," PhD Thesis, Finance Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney, number 1-2021, January-A.
    6. Cotter, John & Salvador, Enrique, 2022. "The non-linear trade-off between return and risk and its determinants," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 100-132.
    7. Bai, Jennie & Bali, Turan G. & Wen, Quan, 2021. "Is there a risk-return tradeoff in the corporate bond market? Time-series and cross-sectional evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(3), pages 1017-1037.
    8. Hatemi-J, Abdulnasser & Irandoust, Manuchehr, 2011. "The dynamic interaction between volatility and returns in the US stock market using leveraged bootstrap simulations," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 329-334, September.
    9. Jin, Xiaoye, 2017. "Time-varying return-volatility relation in international stock markets," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 157-173.
    10. Darrat, Ali F. & Gilley, Otis W. & Li, Bin & Wu, Yanhui, 2011. "Revisiting the risk/return relations in the Asian Pacific markets: New evidence from alternative models," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 199-206, February.
    11. Linnenluecke, Martina K. & Chen, Xiaoyan & Ling, Xin & Smith, Tom & Zhu, Yushu, 2017. "Research in finance: A review of influential publications and a research agenda," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 188-199.
    12. Guo, Hui & Savickas, Robert & Wang, Zijun & Yang, Jian, 2009. "Is the Value Premium a Proxy for Time-Varying Investment Opportunities? Some Time-Series Evidence," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(1), pages 133-154, February.
    13. Kim, Eung-Bin & Byun, Suk-Joon, 2021. "Risk, ambiguity, and equity premium: International evidence," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 321-335.
    14. Attiya Yasmeen Javid, 2000. "Alternative Capital Asset Pricing Models: A Review of Theory and Evidence," PIDE Research Report 2000:3, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    15. Zhou, Guofu, 1995. "Small sample rank tests with applications to asset pricing," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 71-93, March.
    16. Javid, Attiya Yasmin & Ahmad, Eatzaz, 2008. "Testing multifactor capital asset pricing model in case of Pakistani market," MPRA Paper 37341, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Campbell, John Y. & Giglio, Stefano & Polk, Christopher & Turley, Robert, 2018. "An intertemporal CAPM with stochastic volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(2), pages 207-233.
    18. Elyasiani, Elyas & Mansur, Iqbal, 1998. "Sensitivity of the bank stock returns distribution to changes in the level and volatility of interest rate: A GARCH-M model," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(5), pages 535-563, May.
    19. Peter F. Christoffersen & Francis X. Diebold, 2006. "Financial Asset Returns, Direction-of-Change Forecasting, and Volatility Dynamics," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(8), pages 1273-1287, August.
    20. Frank Weikai Li, 2016. "Macro Disagreement and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns," The Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(1), pages 1-45.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

    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:4857. 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.