Georgy Chabakauri

Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Preferences, Beliefs, and Portfolio Constraints

Portfolio constraints are widespread and have significant effects on asset prices. This paper studies the effects of constraints in a dynamic economy populated by investors with different risk aversions and beliefs about the rate of economic growth. The paper provides a comparison of various constraints and conditions under which these constraints help match certain empirical facts about asset prices. Under these conditions, borrowing and short-sale constraints decrease stock return volatilities, whereas limited stock market participation constraints amplify them. Moreover, borrowing constraints generate spikes in interest rates and volatilities and have stronger effects on asset prices than short-sale constraints.

Capital Requirements and Asset Prices

Abstract We study the effects of collateral constraints in an economy populated by investors with nonpledgeable labor incomes and heterogeneous preferences and beliefs. We show that these constraints inflate stock prices and generate spikes and crashes in price-dividend ratios and volatilities, clustering of volatilities, and leverage cycles. They also lead to substantial decreases in interest rates and increases in Sharpe ratios when investors are anxious about hitting constraints due to production crises in the economy. Furthermore, stock prices have large collateral premiums over nonpledgeable incomes. We derive asset prices and stationary distributions of the investors’ consumption shares in closed form.

Asset Pricing with Index Investing

We provide a novel theoretical analysis of how index investing affects capital market equilibrium. We consider a dynamic exchange economy with heterogeneous investors and two Lucas trees and find that indexing can either increase or decrease the correlation between stock returns and in general increases (decreases) volatilities and betas of stocks with larger (smaller) market capitalizations. Indexing also decreases market volatility and interest rates, although those effects are weak. The impact of index investing is particularly strong when stocks have heterogeneous fundamentals. Our results highlight that indexing changes not only how investors can trade but also their incentives to trade.

Investor Protection and Asset Prices

Empirical evidence suggests that investor protection has significant effects on ownership concentration and asset prices. We develop a dynamic asset pricing model to address the empirical regularities and uncover some of the underlying mechanisms at play. Our model features a controlling shareholder who endogenously accumulates control over a firm and diverts a fraction of its output. Better investor protection decreases stock holdings of controlling shareholders, increases stock mean-returns, and increases stock return volatilities when ownership concentration is sufficiently high, consistent with the related empirical evidence. The model also predicts that better protection increases interest rates and decreases the controlling shareholders leverage.

Dynamic equilibrium with rare events and heterogeneous epstein-zin investors

We consider a general equilibrium Lucas (1978) economy with one consumption good and two heterogeneous Epstein-Zin investors. The output is subject to rare large drops or, more generally, can have non-lognormal distribution with higher cumulants. The heterogeneity in preferences generates excess stock return volatilities, procyclical price-dividend ratios and interest rates, and countercyclical market prices of risk when the elasticity of intertemporal substitution (EIS) is greater than one. Moreover, the latter results cannot be jointly replicated in a model where investors have EIS ≤ 1 or CRRA preferences. We propose new approach for deriving equilibrium, and extend the analysis to the case of heterogeneous beliefs about probabilities of rare events.