The three sections of this paper support three related conclusions. First, asset demands with the familiar properties of wealth homogeneity and linearity in expected returns follow as close approximations from expected utility maximizing behavior under the assumptions of constant relative risk...

When all financial assets have risky returns, the mean-variance portfolio model is potentially subject to two types of bliss points. One bliss point arises when a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function displays negative marginal utility for sufficiently large end-of-period wealth, such as in...

The symmetry restriction in a system of financial asset demands has frequently been employed to reduce the number of independent parameters to be estimated. The theoretical implications of the symmetry restriction are examined in this paper, and it is found that symmetry implies a particular...

This paper develops behavioral relationships explaining investors' demands for long-term bonds, using three alternative hypotheses about investors' expectations of future bond prices (yields). The results, based on U.S. 'data for six major categories of bond market investors, consistently...

Among the numerous familiar sets of specific assumptions sufficient to derive mean-variance portfolio behavior from more general expected utility maximization in continuous time, the assumptions of constant relative risk aversion and joint normally distributed asset return assessments are also...