Optimal Beliefs, Asset Prices, and the Prefer...
Jonathan A.. Parker, Markus K....
Optimal Beliefs, Asset Prices, and the Preference for Skewed Returns by Jonathan A.. Parker, Markus K.. Brunnermeier, Christian Gollier, National Bureau of Economic Research, Jonathan A.. Parker, Markus K.. Brunnermeier, Christian Gollier, National Bureau of Economic Research
Nearby Libraries

Only you can see this

Save Note
Last edited by MARC Bot
1 day ago | History

Human beings want to believe that good outcomes in the future are more likely, but also want to make good decisions that increase average outcomes in the future. We consider a general equilibrium model with complete markets and show that when investors hold beliefs that optimally balance these two incentives, portfolio holdings and asset prices match six observed patterns: (i) because the cost of biased beliefs are typically second-order, investors typically hold biased assessments of probabilities and so are not perfectly diversified according to objective metrics; (ii) because the costs of biased beliefs temper these biases, the utility costs of the lack of diversification are limited; (iii) because there is a complementarity between believing a state more likely and purchasing more of the asset that pays off in that state, investors over-invest in only one Arrow-Debreu security and smooth their consumption well across the remaining states; (iv) because different households can settle on different states to be optimistic about, optimal portfolios of ex ante identical investors can be heterogeneous; (v) because low-price and low-probability states are the cheapest states to buy consumption in, overoptimism about these states distorts consumption the least in the rest of the states, so that investors tend to overinvest in the most skewed securities; (vi) finally, because investors with optimal expectations have higher demand for more skewed assets, ceteris paribus, more skewed asset can have lower average returns.

Publish Date
Language
English
Edition Availability
Cover of: Optimal Beliefs, Asset Prices, and the Preference for Skewed Returns
Optimal Beliefs, Asset Prices, and the Preference for Skewed Returns
2007, National Bureau of Economic Research
electronic resource in English

Add another edition?

Book Details


Edition Notes

February 2007.

Access restricted to subscribers.

Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers.

System requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Published in
Cambridge, Mass
Series
NBER working paper series -- no. w12940, Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research) -- no. w12940

The Physical Object

Format
[electronic resource]

Edition Identifiers

Open Library
OL62723311M

Work Identifiers

Work ID
OL46189652W

Source records

Community Reviews (0)

No community reviews have been submitted for this work.

Lists

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON