This paper argues that observations of non-stationary choice behavior need notnecessarily imply specific properties of the individual’s discount function. As weshow, the observed “anomalies” in intertemporal choice can alternatively be explained by an individual’s perception of the risk...

One of the most enduring questions in finance is the persistence of investment risk across time. Traditional finance lacks of recipes on how to approach and how to hedge non-diversifiable risks. Risks that can not be diversified at a given point in time can nevertheless be averaged over time...

This paper introduces state dependent utility into the standard Mehra and Prescott (1985) economy by allowing the representative agents coefficient of relative risk aversion to vary with the underlying economys growth rate. Existence of equilibrium is proved and its asymptotic properties...

The paper rst shows that nancial market equilibria need not to exist if agents possesscumulative prospect theory preferences with piecewise-power value functions. This is due tothe boundary behavior of the cumulative prospect theory value function, which might causean innite short-selling...

Assuming investors are loss averse, repeated risky investments are less attractive inmyopic evaluation. A theoretical foundation for this effect is given by the behavioralconcept of myopic loss aversion (MLA). The consequences of MLA have been confirmedin several between-subject experimental...

The paper shows that financial market equilibria need not exist if agents possess cumulative prospect theory preferences with piecewise-power value functions. The reason is an infiniteshort-selling problem. But even when a short-sell constraint is added, non-existence can occur due to...

Natural catastrophes attract regularly the attention of media and have become a source of public concern. From a financial viewpoint, natural catastrophes represent idiosyncratic risks,diversifiable at the world level. But for reasons analyzed in this pap er reinsurance markets are unable to...

We study properties of structured financial products optimizing a utility functional of a customer. The conventional method may have the disadvantage that the a priori restriction to a certain number of assets could make it impossible to find the optimal portfolio. So instead of optimizing the...

We conduct controlled experiments in order to analyze individual trading behavior. Our results suggest that investors measure their gains relative to their initial wealth, and that this reference point together with past stock price changes determine the portfolio choices. Subjects choose a...

We analyze the investment behavior of private clients concerning structured products. To ascertain their stated and revealed preferences, we use a questionnaire and a field experiment, respectively. The real product issued in the field experiment is comparable to one product in the questionnaire...