This paper develops an overlapping generations model of optimal rebalancing where agents differ in age and risk tolerance. Equilibrium rebalancing is driven by a leverage effect that influences levered and unlevered agents in opposite directions, an aggregate risk tolerance effect that depends...

What determines risk-bearing capacity and the amount of leverage in financial markets? Using unique archival data on collateralized lending, we show that personal experience can affect individual risk-taking and aggregate leverage. When an investor syndicate speculating in Amsterdam in 1772 went...

Risky-asset prices are conventionally modeled as "fully (information-) revealing". Much less work has been done on how prices get to reveal information. Following the "noisy-prices", rational-expectations approach, our answer focuses on the micro-foundations of information acquisition and the...

This paper investigates the efficiency of household investment decisions in a unique dataset containing the disaggregated wealth and income of the entire population of Sweden. The analysis focuses on two main sources of inefficiency in the financial portfolio: underdiversification of risky...

Investor confidence and risk tolerance are important concepts that investors are constantly trying to gauge. Yet these concepts are notoriously hard to measure in practice. Most attempts rely on price or return data, but these run into trouble when trying to disentangle whether an observed price...

We study the role of risk preferences and frictions in portfolio choice using variation in 401(k) default options. Patterns of active choice in response to different default funds imply that, absent participation frictions, 94% of investors prefer holding stocks, with an equity share of...

We investigate whether individuals' experiences of macro-economic outcomes have long-term effects on their risk attitudes, as often suggested for the generation that experienced the Great Depression. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances from 1964-2004, we find that individuals who...

Though risk aversion and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution have been the subjects of careful scrutiny when calibrating preferences, the long-run risks literature as well as the broader literature using recursive utility to address asset pricing puzzles have ignored the full...

We present a model in which some investors are prohibited from using leverage and other investors' leverage is limited by margin requirements. The former investors bid up high-beta assets while the latter agents trade to profit from this, but must de-lever when they hit their margin constraints....

We develop a model of optimal investment with two types of agents with different beliefs about the market dynamics. Market conformists agree with the true log-normal price distribution and rebels believe in price predictability. Depending on their exact beliefs, the rebels may follow either a...