Nearly all life-cycle models adopt Yaari's (1965) assumption that individuals know the survival probabilities that they face. Given that an individual's exact survival probabilities are likely unknown, we explore the implications of relaxing this assumption. If there is no annuity market, then...

Studies of risk preference have empirically established two regularities that are inconsistent with the canonical expected utility model: (1) risk aversion over small gambles greatly exceeds risk aversion over larger stakes and (2) insurance buyers play the lottery. This paper characterizes risk...

We provide a user's guide to exotic' preferences: nonlinear time aggregators, departures from expected utility, preferences over time with known and unknown probabilities, risk-sensitive and robust control, hyperbolic' discounting, and preferences over sets ( temptations'). We apply each to a...

This paper revisits the Home Bias Puzzle -- the relatively low interna- tional diversification of portfolios. We suggest that part of the diversifi- cation puzzle may be due to reliance on the conventional CAPM model as the benchmark predicting patterns of diversification. We compare the asset...

Variation in economic preferences is systematically related to both individual and aggregate economic outcomes, yet little is known about the origins of the worldwide preference variation. This paper uses globally representative data on risk aversion, time preference, altruism, positive...

This paper compares different solution methods for computing the equilibrium of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models with recursive preferences such as those in Epstein and Zin (1989 and 1991). Models with these preferences have recently become popular, but we know little about...