This paper develops a theory of dynamic pessimism and its impact on asset prices. Notions of time-varying pessimism … endogenous state variable driving risk aversion, portfolio decisions, and equilibrium asset prices. Using survey data, we …

role of secondary markets in providing opportunities for redistributing risk is made transparent and the modifications …

I characterize a dynamic economy under general distributions of households' risk tolerance, endowments, and beliefs … consumption-share increases; (b) the wealth-share of high risk-tolerant households increases; (c) richer households' wealth … risk sharing. Higher uncertainty increases stock prices, risk premiums, volatility, wealth inequality and the dispersion of …

explain a set of behavioral anomalies identified across four distinct domains of decision-making: choice under risk, choice … risk and ambiguity, belief updating, and survey expectations. Our framework makes predictions that we test using exogenous …

shocks to aggregate uncertainty, I introduce a small, time-varying risk of economic disaster in a standard real business … risk of disaster does not affect the path of macroeconomic aggregates - a "separation theorem" between macroeconomic … variation in risk premia over time, are observationally equivalent to preference shocks. An increase in the perceived …