Ambiguity aversion, asset prices, and the welfare costs of aggregate fluctuations

Irasema Alonso and Mauricio Prado

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 2015, vol. 51, issue C, 78-92

Abstract: Under the hypothesis that aggregate U.S. consumption is random and, more importantly, viewed as ambiguous by consumers, we examine the implications for asset prices and for how consumption fluctuations influence consumer welfare. We consider a simple, Mehra–Prescott-style endowment economy with a representative agent facing consumption fluctuations calibrated to match U.S. data from 1889 to 2008. Our experiment is to restrict preference parameters in order to as well as possible match some asset-price facts—the average returns on equity and a short-term risk-free bond—and then compute the welfare benefits of removing all consumption fluctuations given those parameters. These benefits turn out to be quite large: consumers are willing to pay about 10% of consumption in permanent terms under our benchmark calibration.

Keywords: Ambiguity aversion; Equity premium; Consumption fluctuations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D81 E21 E32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165188914002619
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:dyncon:v:51:y:2015:i:c:p:78-92

DOI: 10.1016/j.jedc.2014.09.039

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control is currently edited by J. Bullard, C. Chiarella, H. Dawid, C. H. Hommes, P. Klein and C. Otrok

More articles in Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().