The fact that expected payoffs on assets and call options are infinite under most log-stable distributions led both Paul Samuelson (as quoted by Smith 1976) and Robert Merton (1976) to conjecture that assets and derivatives could not be reasonably priced under these distributions, despite their...

We study a consumption based asset pricing model with incomplete information and alpha-stable shocks. Incomplete information leads to a non-Gaussian filtering problem. Bayesian updating generates fluctuating confidence in the agents' estimate of the persistent component of the dividends’...

We study the consumption based asset pricing model due to Lucas (1978). The exogenous endowment sequence is modeled as a linear stochastic process driven by stable shocks in an otherwise standard framework. The Gaussian process emerges as a special case. We derive exact analytical solutions for...