In this note we show the following result of Dybvig (1995) is valid for a general von Neumann–Morgenstern utility function: for an agent who does not tolerate a decline in consumption, the optimal investment out of discretionary wealth (in excess of the perpetuity value of current consumption)...

This paper identifies a new sufficient condition for a prudent agent to have positive precautionary saving in the presence of labor income and interest rate risks of any size. We also provide three economic interpretations for this condition focusing respectively on the marginal effect of saving...

A multiplicative form of the habit term in the utility function has some undesirable properties if the habit function is itself still additive (Wendner, 2003). A geometric form for the way the stock of habit accumulates can resolve these shortcomings.

We show that a steeply increasing workload before a deadline is compatible with time-consistent preferences. The key departure from the literature is that we consider a stochastic environment where success of effort is not guaranteed.

I put forward a concise and intuitive formula for the calculation of the valuation for a good in the presence of the expectation that further, related, goods will soon become available. This valuation is tractable in the sense that it does not require the explicit resolution of the consumer’s...

We consider a life-cycle model with bequest motives, and assume that the individual does not know his/her survival probability and has maxmin utility preferences; we show that it is optimal not to annuitize but to purchase pure life insurance policies instead.

Kimball (1990a,b) established that income risk increases the marginal propensity to consume if and only if absolute prudence decreases. We characterize decreasing and increasing multivariate prudence and show that a multidimensional risk increases the marginal propensity to consume if and only...

In this paper, we consider a finite-horizon model with the time-additive utility and the time varying discount rate. With the assumption of the concavity of absolute risk tolerance, the concavity of the consumption function has been proved. This result significantly broadens the conclusion of...

Based on the HRS, I find strong dissaving of nursing home residents and a significant overestimation of U.S. saving rates from age 75 onwards if nursing home residents are excluded as in most micro datasets.

This letter develops a set of simple conditions under which an individual is willing to save an extra amount of money due to the presence of ambiguity concerning his second period wealth. This extra precautionary saving motive is naturally associated with the notion of ambiguity prudence.