The paper constructs a model of optimal portfolio allocation that focuses on the role of housing as collateral, allows for house price risk, and assumes that altering the quantity of housing incurs an adjustment cost. Because of the adjustment cost, the current house value becomes a state...

When utility depends on a single, frictionlessly adjustable consumption good, the household's willingness to substitute consumption intertemporally is solely determined by the curvature of the utility function. When the utility specification is generalized from one good to two, however, the...

The paper generalizes the Grossman and Laroque (1990) model of optimal consumption and portfolio allocation in the context in which a durable good (or house) subject to adjustment costs is both an argument of the utility function and a component of wealth. Because the Grossman and Laroque model...