We show that a life cycle model with realistically calibrated uninsurable labour income risk and moderate risk aversion can simultaneously match stock market participation rates and asset allocation decisions conditional on participation. The key ingredients of the model are Epstein-Zin...

Motivated by the success of internal habit formation preferences in explaining asset pricing puzzles, we introduce these preferences in a life-cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice with liquidity constraints, undiversifiable labor income risk and stock-market participation costs. In...

We solve a model with incomplete markets and heterogeneous agents that generates a large equity premium, while simultaneously matching stock market participation and individual asset holdings. The high risk premium is driven by incomplete risk sharing among stockholders, which results from the...

The stock market participation patterns differ significantly in taxable (TAs) and tax-deferred accounts (TDAs). This paper develops a quantitative life-cycle model to study the optimal stock market participation choice for households with assets in both TAs and TDAs. We find that differential...

We study the infinite horizon model of household portfolio choice under liquidity constraints and revisit the portfolio specialization puzzle for impatient consumers with access to riskless and risky assets. We consider a labour income process that allows us to decompose the consumption and...

Economic theory suggests that uninsurable income risk, health risk and the expectation of future borrowing constraints can reduce the share of risky assets in a household's portfolio. In fact, if its utility function exhibits decreasing absolute risk aversion and decreasing prudence, a household...

This Paper solves numerically for the optimal consumption and portfolio choice of an infinitely lived investor facing short sales and borrowing constraints, undiversifiable labour income risk and a predictable time varying equity premium. The investor aggressively times the market while positive...

We calibrate a life-cycle model with uninsurable labour income risk and borrowing constraints to match wealth accumulation and portfolio allocation profiles of direct and indirect stockholders in both taxable and tax-deferred accounts. Tax-deferred accounts generate an increase in wealth...

Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we document that controlling for observable characteristics, household investors' likelihood of entering the stock market within the ensuing five years is about 20% to 30% higher if their parents or children had entered the stock market during the...

This paper develops and estimates a dynamic model of stock market participation, where consumers' decisions regarding stock market participation are influenced by participation costs. The practical significance of the participation costs is considered as being a channel through which financial...