the sickness of k'ism

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Aug 16 22:03:25 PDT 2000


[For some reason this struck me as crystallizing the brutal flattening of human possibility central to capitalism today.]

"Stock Market Mean Reversion And The Optimal Equity Allocation Of

A Long-Lived Investor"

BY: JOHN Y. CAMPBELL

Harvard University

Dept. of Economics

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

JOAO F. COCCO

London Business School

FRANCISCO J. GOMES

London Business School

PASCAL J. MAENHOUT

INSEAD European Institute of Business

Administration

LUIS M. VICEIRA

Harvard Business School

Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:

http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=237175

Paper ID: Harvard Institute of Economic Research Paper No. 1899

Date: June 2000

Contact: JOHN Y. CAMPBELL

Email: Mailto:john_campbell at harvard.edu

Postal: Harvard University

Dept. of Economics

Room 213

Littauer Center

Cambridge, MA 02138-3001 USA

Phone: 617-496-6448

Fax: 617-495-7730

Co-Auth: JOAO F. COCCO

Email: not available

Postal: London Business School

Sussex Place

Regent's Park

London NW1 4SA, UK

Co-Auth: FRANCISCO J. GOMES

Email: not available

Postal: London Business School

Sussex Place

Regent's Park

London NW1 4SA, UK

Co-Auth: PASCAL J. MAENHOUT

Email: not available

Postal: INSEAD European Institute of Business Administration

Boulevard de Constance

F-77305 Fontainebleau Cedex, FRANCE

Co-Auth: LUIS M. VICEIRA

Email: Mailto:lviceira at hbs.edu

Postal: Harvard Business School

Soldiers Field Road

Boston, MA 02163 USA

ABSTRACT:

This paper solves numerically the intertemporal consumption and

portfolio choice problem of an infinitely-lived investor who

faces a time-varying equity premium. The solutions we obtain are

very similar to the approximate analytical solutions of Campbell

and Viceira (1999), except at the upper extreme of the state

space where both the numerical consumption and portfolio rules

flatten out. We also consider a constrained version of the

problem in which the investor faces borrowing and short-sales

constraints. These constraints bind when the equity premium

moves away from its mean in either direction, and are

particularly severe for risk-tolerant investors. The optimal

constrained portfolio rules are similar but not identical to the

optimal unconstrained rules with the constraints imposed. The

portfolio constraints also affect the optimal consumption

policy.

Keywords: Hedging Demand, Intertemporal Portfolio Choice, And

Mean Reversion



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