This paper characterizes the stochastic deterioration resulting from taking a zero-mean financial risk in the presence of correlated non-financial background risk. We show in particular that it has an equivalent stochastic order as well as a necessary and sufficient "integral condition'' that...

People often fail to insure against catastrophes, even when insurance is subsidized. Even when insuring homes, many homeowners still underinsure the full value of their assets. Some researchers have suggested using long-term insurance contracts to reduce these insurance gaps. We examine...

We examine the optimal saving decision of individuals who face a multiplicative risk. An individual is defined to be multiplicative risk prudent if multiplying a pure risk to her future wealth raises her optimal savings. We show that an individual is multiplicative risk prudent if and only if...

We provide a continuous-time "risk-centric" representation of the New Keynesian model, which we use to analyze the interactions between asset prices, financial speculation, and macroeconomic outcomes when output is determined by aggregate demand. In principle, interest rate policy is highly...

We consider dynamic sublinear expectations (i.e., time-consistent coherent risk measures) whose scenario sets consist of singular measures corresponding to a general form of volatility uncertainty. We derive a càdlàg nonlinear martingale which is also the value process of a superhedging...

We define a class of risk-taking-neutral (RTN) background risks. These background risks have the property that they will not alter decisions made with respect to another risk, for individuals with HARA utility. If we wish to compare a decision made with and without some exogenous background...

If a given risky prospect is compared with multiple choice alternatives, then a joint test for optimality is more appropriate than a series of pairwise Stochastic Dominance tests. We develop and implement a bootstrap empirical likelihood ratio test for this hypothesis. The test statistic and...

Many financial situations present individuals with simple alternatives to solving complex problems. The value of these alternatives depends on whether individuals are sophisticated and know when they are better off opting out of complexity. We tested complexity's effects and evaluated...

We relate time-varying aggregate ambiguity (V-VSTOXX) to individual investor trading. We use the trading records of more than 100,000 individual investors from a large German online brokerage from March 2010 to December 2015. We find that an increase in ambiguity is associated with increased...