Working Paper: NBER ID: w17199
Authors: Ngockhanh Tran; Richard J. Zeckhauser
Abstract: Movements in asset prices are a major risk confronting individuals. This paper establishes new asset pricing results when agents differ in risk preference, time preference and/or expectations. It shows that risk tolerance is a critical concept driving savings decisions, consumption allocations, prices and return volatilities. Surprisingly, due to the equilibrium risk sharing, the precautionary savings motive in the aggregate can vastly exceed that of even the most prudent actual agent in the economy. Consequently, a low real interest rate, resulting from large aggregate savings, can prevail with reasonable risk aversions for all agents. One downside of a large aggregate savings motive is that savings rates become extremely sensitive to output fluctuation. Thus, the same mechanism that produces realistically low interest rates tends to make them unrealistically volatile. \n \nA powerful isomorphism allows differences in time preference and expectations to be swept away in the analysis, yielding an equivalent economy whose agents differ merely in risk aversion. These results hold great potential to simplify the analysis of heterogeneous-agent economies, as we demonstrate in quantifying how asset prices move and bounding their volatilities. All results are obtained in closed form for any number of agents possessing additively separable preferences in an endowment economy.
Keywords: savings; asset prices; heterogeneous preferences; risk tolerance; precautionary savings
JEL Codes: D51; G12
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| risk tolerance (G11) | consumption paths (E21) |
| consumption paths (E21) | market prices (P22) |
| consumption paths (E21) | return volatilities (G17) |
| risk tolerance (G11) | return volatilities (G17) |
| precautionary savings (D14) | interest rates (E43) |
| precautionary savings (D14) | return volatilities (G17) |
| risk-sharing dynamics (D16) | return volatilities (G17) |
| risk tolerance (G11) | economic shocks (F69) |