IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tse/wpaper/129648.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The welfare cost of ignoring the beta

Author

Listed:
  • Gollier, Christian

Abstract

Because of risk aversion, any sensible investment valuation system should value less projects that contribute more to the aggregate risk. In theory, this is done by adjusting discount rates to consumption betas. But in reality, most public institutions use a dis-count rate that is rather insensitive to the risk profile of their investment projects. The economic consequences of the implied misallocation of capital are severe. I calibrate a Lucas model in which the investment opportunity set contains a constellation of projects with different expected returns and risk profiles. The model matches the traditional finan-cial and macro moments, together with the observed heterogeneity of assets’ risk profiles. The welfare loss of using a single discount rate is equivalent to a permanent reduction in consumption that lies somewhere between 15% and 45% depending upon which single discount rate is used.

Suggested Citation

  • Gollier, Christian, 2024. "The welfare cost of ignoring the beta," TSE Working Papers 24-1556, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    • Handle: RePEc:tse:wpaper:129648
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.tse-fr.eu/sites/default/files/TSE/documents/doc/wp/2024/wp_tse_1556.pdf
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Breeden, Douglas T., 1979. "An intertemporal asset pricing model with stochastic consumption and investment opportunities," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 265-296, September.
    2. Weil, Philippe, 1989. "The equity premium puzzle and the risk-free rate puzzle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 401-421, November.
    3. Hansen, Lars Peter & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1983. "Stochastic Consumption, Risk Aversion, and the Temporal Behavior of Asset Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(2), pages 249-265, April.
    4. Lucas, Robert E, Jr, 1978. "Asset Prices in an Exchange Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(6), pages 1429-1445, November.
    5. Philipp Krüger & Augustin Landier & David Thesmar, 2015. "The WACC Fallacy: The Real Effects of Using a Unique Discount Rate," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(3), pages 1253-1285, June.
    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. Frikk Nesje & Paolo G. Piacquadio & Paolo Giovanni Piacquadio, 2025. "Intergenerational Discounting and Inequality," CESifo Working Paper Series 11630, CESifo.

    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. Gollier, Christian, 2021. "The Welfare Cost of Ignoring the Beta," FEEM Working Papers 309916, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    2. Frédéric Cherbonnier & Christian Gollier, 2022. "Risk-adjusted Social Discount Rates," Post-Print hal-04012977, HAL.
    3. 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.
    4. Anisha Ghosh & Christian Julliard & Alex P. Taylor, 2017. "What Is the Consumption-CAPM Missing? An Information-Theoretic Framework for the Analysis of Asset Pricing Models," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(2), pages 442-504.
    5. Angelo Melino & Alan X. Yang, 2003. "State Dependent Preferences Can Explain the Equity Premium Puzzle," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 6(4), pages 806-830, October.
    6. YiLi Chien & Hanno Lustig, 2010. "The Market Price of Aggregate Risk and the Wealth Distribution," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(4), pages 1596-1650, April.
    7. Kris Jacobs, 2002. "The Rate of Risk Aversion May Be Lower Than You Think," CIRANO Working Papers 2002s-08, CIRANO.
    8. Aase, Knut K., 2012. "What Puzzles? New insights in asset pricing," Discussion Papers 2012/13, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    9. Rubens Penha Cysne, 2005. "Equity-Premium Puzzle: Evidence From Brazilian Data," Anais do XXXIII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 33rd Brazilian Economics Meeting] 088, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    10. Hanno Lustig, "undated". "When is Market Incompleteness Irrelevant for the Price of Aggregate Risk (joint with Dirk Krueger, UPenn)," UCLA Economics Online Papers 380, UCLA Department of Economics.
    11. Georges Dionne & Jingyuan Li & Cedric Okou, 2012. "An Extension of the Consumption-based CAPM Model," Cahiers de recherche 1214, CIRPEE.
    12. Hardouvelis, Gikas A. & Kim, Dongcheol & Wizman, Thierry A., 1996. "Asset pricing models with and without consumption data: An empirical evaluation," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 267-301, September.
    13. Campbell, John Y., 2003. "Consumption-based asset pricing," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 13, pages 803-887, Elsevier.
    14. Aase, Knut K., 2014. "Recursive utility and jump-diffusions," Discussion Papers 2014/9, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    15. Davis, Morris A. & Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn, 2015. "Housing, Finance, and the Macroeconomy," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 753-811, Elsevier.
    16. Ludvigson, Sydney C., 2013. "Advances in Consumption-Based Asset Pricing: Empirical Tests," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 799-906, Elsevier.
    17. H. Youn Kim, 2003. "Intertemporal production and asset pricing: a duality approach," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 55(2), pages 344-379, April.
    18. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2013. "Understanding Asset Prices," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2013-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    19. Cherbonnier, Frédéric & Gollier, Christian, 2018. "Risk-adjusted social discount rates," TSE Working Papers 18-972, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Dec 2020.
    20. Marija Đorđević, 2016. "Consumption-Based Macroeconomic Models Of Asset Pricing Theory," Economic Annals, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Belgrade, vol. 61(211), pages 7-28, October -.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Discounting; investment theory; asset pricing; carbon pricing; Arrow-Lind theorem; WACC fallacy; rare disasters; capital budgeting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • H43 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    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:tse:wpaper:129648. 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/tsetofr.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.