I study the conditions under which assets are sold or used as collateral. Secured loans can be optimal by reducing the lender's incentives to acquire costly information about the future value of collateral assets. Furthermore, when the borrower has incentives to falsify the assets' quality, the...

I characterize the global solution to the portfolio problem of two heterogeneous investors with general preferences, in a two-tree, two-good environment. Investors have recursive preferences and a bias in consumption towards a preferred good. The framework highlights the role of the allocation...

I adapt the framework of Sauzet (2021) to an international setting to characterize the global solution to the international portfolio problem in full generality, a long-standing open issue in international finance. In this two-country, two-good environment, investors have recursive preferences...

We study the distributional effects of asset returns using a heterogeneous-agent model estimated to match the joint distribution of wealth and returns. In the model, endogenous portfolio decisions play a key role through their impact on households' wealth accumulation. We find substantial...

We assess the pattern of Euro Area financial integration adjusting for the role of "onshore offshore financial centers" (OOFCs) within the Euro Area. The OOFCs of Luxembourg, Ireland, and the Netherlands serve dual roles as both hubs of investment fund intermediation and centers of securities...

We study the basic economic problem of choice between long-term and short-term commitments under a general characterization of uncertainty (aggregate uncertainty). When contingencies are contractible, a perfect market of Arrow-Debreau contingent claims implements the social optimum. When...

We provide explicit solutions to life-cycle utility maximization problems simultaneously involving dynamic decisions on investments in stocks and bonds, consumption of perishable goods, and the rental and the ownership of residential real estate. House prices, stock prices, interest rates, and...

Decision making can be a complex process requiring the integration of several attributes of choice options. Understanding the neural processes underlying (uncertain) investment decisions is an important topic in neuroeconomics. We analyzed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from...

We revisit the question whether commodities should be included in investors' portfolios. We employ for the first time a stochastic dominance efficiency (SDE) approach to construct optimal portfolios with and without commodities and we evaluate their comparative performance. SDE circumvents the...

An optimal portfolio with the highest possible Sharpe ratio plays an important role for capital allocation and performance evaluation. This paper introduces a simple algorithm for finding the Sharpe-optimal portfolio without solving a non-linear problem. The results are tested on S&P 100...