We investigate households' portfolio choice using a microeconometric approach derived from mean-variance optimization. We assume that households have heterogeneous expectations on the distribution of excess returns and that they cannot take short positions in risky assets. Assuming two such...

We investigate households' portfolio choice using a microeconometric approach derived from mean-variance optimization. We assume that households have heterogeneous expectations on the distribution of excess returns and that they can't take short positions in the risky assets. Assuming two such...

We develop a structural econometric model to elicit household-specific expectations about future financial asset returns and risk attitudes by using data on observed portfolio holdings and self-assessed willingness to bear financial risk. Our framework assumes that household portfolios are...

Maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) of stochastic differential equations (SDEs) is difficult because in general the transition density function of these processes is not known in closed form, and has to be approximated somehow. An approximation based on efficient importance sampling (EIS) is...

This paper deals with the estimation of continuous time stochastic volatility models of option pricing. We argue that option prices are much more informative about the parameters than asset prices. This is confirmed in a Monte Carlo experiment which compares two very simple strategies based on...

This paper exploits an Italian microeconomic data set to study retirement behaviour of women and men using survival analysis techniques. After a brief introduction to the Italian pension system and to the Bank of Italy survey, different specifications of a Cox proportional hazard model are...