Richer and healthier agents tend to hold riskier portfolios and spend proportionally less on health expenditures. Potential explanations include health and wealth effects on preferences, expected longevity or disposable total wealth. Using HRS data, we perform a structural estimation of a...

The empirical literature on the asset allocation and medical expenditures of U.S. households consistently shows that risky portfolio shares are increasing in both wealth and health whereas health investment shares are decreasing in these same variables. Despite this evidence, most of the...

The empirical literature on the asset allocation and medical expenditures ofU.S. households consistently shows that risky portfolio shares are increasing inboth wealth and health whereas health investment shares are decreasing in thesesame variables. Despite this evidence, most of the existing...

This paper studies the lifetime effects of exogenous changes in health insurance coverage (e.g. Medicare, PPACA, termination of employer-provided plans) on the dynamic optimal allocation (consumption, leisure, health expenditures), status (health, wealth and survival rates), and welfare. We...

This study focuses on dynamic asset pricing implications for consumption and portfolio shares. First, we exploit the investors' intertemporal budget constraint and the induced national saving identity to construct US total wealth. We then document the empirical shares using aggregate consumption...

Information asymmetry is a necessary prerequisite for testing adverse selection. This paper applies this sequence of tests to Mauritian slave auctions. The theory of dynamic auctions with private and common values suggests that when an informed participant is known to be active, uninformed...

Reference–dependent preference models assume that agents derive utility fromdeviations of consumption from benchmark levels, rather than from consumptionlevels. These references can be either backward-looking (as explicit in the Habit literature) or forward-looking (as implicitly suggested by...

This paper proposes a new wealth-dependent utility function for the inter-temporal consumption and portfolio problem, in which the subsistance (bliss) con-sumption level is a function of wealth. Ratchet effects obtain when higher wealth in-creases the subsistance consumption level; blas´...

This paper analyzes the important time variation in U.S. aggregate portfolio allocations. To do so, we first use flexible descriptions of preferences and investment opportunities to derive optimal decision rules that nest tactical, myopic, and strategic portfolio allocations. We then compare...