Stavros Panageas

Saving and Investing for Early Retirement: A Theoretical Analysis

We study optimal consumption and portfolio choice in a framework where investors adjust their labor supply through an irreversible choice of their retirement time. We show that investing for early retirement tends to increase savings and reduce an agents effective relative risk aversion, thus increasing her stock market exposure. Contrary to common intuition, an investor might find it optimal to increase the proportion of financial wealth held in stocks as she ages and accumulates assets, even when her income and the investment opportunity set are constant. The model predicts a decrease in risk aversion following strong market gains like those observed in the nineties.

Optimal inattention to the stock market with information costs and transactions costs

Recurrent intervals of inattention to the stock market are optimal if consumers incur a utility cost to observe asset values. When consumers observe the value of their wealth, they decide whether to transfer funds between a transactions account from which consumption must be financed and an investment portfolio of equity and riskless bonds. Transfers of funds are subject to a transactions cost that reduces wealth and consists of two components: one is proportional to the amount of assets transferred, and the other is a fixed resource cost. Because it is costly to transfer funds, the consumer may choose not to transfer any funds on a particular observation date. In general, the optimal adjustment rule—including the size and direction of transfers, and the time of the next observation—is state-dependent. Surprisingly, unless the fixed resource cost of transferring funds is large, the consumer’s optimal behavior eventually evolves to a situation with a purely time-dependent rule with a constant interval of time between observations. This interval of time can be substantial even for tiny observation costs. When this situation is attained, the standard consumption Euler equation holds between observation dates if the consumer is sufficiently risk averse.

Young, Old, Conservative, and Bold: The Implications of Heterogeneity and Finite Lives for Asset Pricing

We study the implications of preference heterogeneity for asset pricing. We use recursive preferences in order to separate heterogeneity in risk aversion from heterogeneity in the intertemporal elasticity of substitution and an overlapping-generations framework to obtain a nondegenerate stationary equilibrium. We solve the model explicitly up to the solutions of ordinary differential equations and highlight the effects of overlapping generations and each dimension of preference heterogeneity on the market price of risk, interest rates, and the volatility of stock returns. We find that separating intertemporal elasticity of substitution and risk aversion heterogeneity can have a substantive impact on the model’s (qualitative and quantitative) ability to address some key asset-pricing issues.

A Global Equilibrium Model of Sudden Stops and External Liquidity Management

Emerging market economies, which have much of their growth ahead of them, either run or should run persistent current account deficits in order to smooth consumption intertemporally. The counterpart of these deficits is their dependence on capital inflows, which can suddenly stop. We make two contributions in this paper: First, we develop a quantitative global-equilibrium model of sudden stops. Second, we use this structure to discuss practical mechanisms to insure emerging markets against sudden stops, ranging from conventional non-contingent reserves accumulation to more sophisticated contingent instrument strategies. Depending on the source of sudden stops, their correlation with world events, and the quality of the hedging instrument available, the gains from these strategies can represent a substantial improvement over existing practices.

The Real Effects of Stock Market Mispricing at the Aggregate: Theory and Empirical Evidence

In this paper we investigate whether stock market overpricing leads to aggregate (real) inefficiencies. We first investigate a standard dynamic contracting model of investment subject to financing constraints. We show that stock market mispricing will have two robust effects on welfare: on the one hand it will distort investment decisions and lead to inefficiencies. On the other hand it will alleviate underinvestment problems and allow some efficient projects to be undertaken. We then turn to the data and investigate which of the two effects dominates at the aggregate. By using proxies for investor sentiment within a vector autoregression (VAR) we find that positive shocks to sentiment boost (real) investment while reducing aggregate profits over the long run, all else equal. We interpret this as evidence that mispricing causes more inefficiencies than it corrects.

Impediments to Financial Trade: Theory and Measurement

We propose a tractable model of an informationally inefficient market. We show the equivalence between our model and a substantially simpler model whereby investors face distortive investment taxes depending both on their identity and the asset class. We use this equivalence to assess existing approaches to inferring whether individual investors have informational advantages. We also develop a methodology of inferring the magnitude of the frictions (implicit taxes) that impede financial trade. We illustrate the methodology by using data on cross-country portfolio holdings and returns to quantify these frictions, and locate the directions in which financial trade seems to be especially impeded. We argue that our measure of frictions contains useful information for the sources of failure of frictionless models, and it helps in studying whether certain factors (such as the size of the financial sector) are associated with lower financial frictions.

Pension Design in the Presence of Systemic Risk

I consider the possibility that individual agents’ savings and portfolio choices can have negative externalities on public finances, whenever retirement consumption drops below a minimum level. Within this framework, I discuss optimal pension design. I show the optimality of two policies. The first policy mandates that retirees use part of their accumulated assets to purchase a claim providing a fixed income stream for the duration of their life. The second policy mandates the purchase of an appropriately structured portfolio insurance policy. Both policies are financed by an appropriate mandatory minimum savings requirement. It is also shown that it is optimal to “back- load” mandatory savings towards the end of an agent’s work-life, when borrowing constraints cease to bind.