Behavioral discount rates for entrepreneurs: the effect of overconfidence

The present paper investigates an optimal reinsurance-investment problem with Hyperbolic Absolute Risk Aversion (HARA) utility. The paper is distinguished from other literature by taking into account the interests of both an insurer and a reinsurer. The insurer is allowed to purchase reinsurance from the reinsurer. Both the insurer and the reinsurer are assumed to invest in one risk-free asset and one risky asset whose price follows Heston's SV model. Our aim is to seek optimal investment-reinsurance strategies to maximize the expected HARA utility of the insurer's and the reinsurer's terminal wealth. In the utility theory, HARA utility consists of power utility, exponential utility and logarithmic utility as special cases. In addition, HARA utility is seldom studied in the optimal investment and reinsurance problem due to its sophisticated expression. In this paper, we choose HARA utility as the risky preference of the insurer. Due to the complexity of the structure of the solution to the original Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation, we use Legendre transform to change the original non-linear HJB equation into its linear dual one, whose solution is easy to conjecture in the case of HARA utility. By calculations and deductions, we obtain the closed-form solutions of optimal investment-reinsurance strategies. Moreover, some special cases are also discussed in detail. Finally, some numerical examples are presented to illustrate the impacts of our model parameters (e.g., interest and volatility) on the optimal reinsurance-investment strategies.

Optimal consumption–investment strategy under the Vasicek model: HARA utility and Legendre transform

This paper studies the optimal consumption-investment strategy with Heston’s stochastic volatility (SV) model under hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility criterion. The financial market is composed of a risk-less asset and a risky asset, whose price process is supposed to be driven by Heston’s SV model. The risky preference of the individual is assumed to satisfy HARA utility, which recovers power utility, exponential utility and logarithm utility as special cases. HARA utility is of general framework in the utility theory and is seldom studied in the existing literatures. Legendre transform-dual technique along with stochastic dynamic programming principle is presented to deal with our problem and the closed-form solution to the optimal consumption-investment strategy is successfully obtained. Finally, some special cases are derived in detail.

We propose a new class of aggregation operator based on utility function and apply them to group decision-making problem. First of all, based on an optimal deviation model, a new operator called the interval generalized ordered weighted utility multiple averaging (IGOWUMA) operator is proposed, it incorporates the risk attitude of decision-makers (DMs) in the aggregation process. Some desirable properties of the IGOWUMA operator are studied afterward. Subsequently, under the hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility function, another new operator named as interval generalized ordered weighted hyperbolic absolute risk aversion utility multiple averaging-HARA (IGOWUMA-HARA) operator is also defined. Then, we discuss its families and find that it includes a wide range of aggregation operators. To determine the weights of the IGOWUMA-HARA operator, a preemptive nonlinear objective programming model is constructed, which can determine a uniform weighting vector to guarantee the uniform standard comparison between the alternatives and measure their fair competition under the condition of valid comparison between various alternatives. Moreover, a new approach for group decision-making is developed based on the IGOWUMA-HARA operator. Finally, a comparison analysis is carried out to illustrate the superiority of the proposed method and the result implies that our operator is superior to the existing operator.

This paper provides a Legendre transform method to deal with a class of investment and consumption problems, whose objective function is to maximize the expected discount utility of intermediate consumption and terminal wealth in the finite horizon. Assume that risk preference of the investor is described by hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility function, which includes power utility, exponential utility, and logarithm utility as special cases. The optimal investment and consumption strategy for HARA utility is explicitly obtained by applying dynamic programming principle and Legendre transform technique. Some special cases are also discussed.

This paper studied an asset and liability management problem with stochastic interest rate, where interest rate is assumed to be governed by an affine interest rate model, while liability process is driven by the drifted Brownian motion. The investors wish to look for an optimal investment strategy to maximize the expected utility of the terminal surplus under hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility function, which consists of power utility, exponential utility, and logarithm utility as special cases. By applying dynamic programming principle and Legendre transform, the explicit solutions for HARA utility are achieved successfully and some special cases are also discussed. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate our results.

In the real-world environments, different individuals have different risk preferences. This paper investigates the optimal portfolio and consumption rule with a Cox–Ingersoll–Ross (CIR) model in a more general utility framework. After consumption, an individual invests his wealth into the financial market with one risk-free asset and multiple risky assets, where the short-term rate is driven by the CIR model and stock price dynamics are simultaneously influenced by random sources from both stochastic interest rate and stock market itself. The individual hopes to optimize their portfolios and consumption rules to maximize expected utility of terminal wealth and intermediate consumption. Risk preference of individual is assumed to satisfy hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility, which contains power utility, logarithm utility, and exponential utility as special cases. By using the principle of stochastic optimality and Legendre transform-dual theory, the explicit expressions of the optimal portfolio and consumption rule are obtained. The sensitivity of the optimal strategies to main parameters is analysed by a numerical example. In addition, economic implications are also presented. Our research results show that Legendre transform-dual theory is an effective methodology in dealing with the portfolio selection problems with HARA utility and interest rate risk can be completely hedged by constructing specific portfolios.

Motivated by the financial crisis of 2007-2009 and the increasing demand for portfolio and risk management, we study optimal insurance and investment problems with regime switching in this thesis. We incorporate an insurable risk into the classical consumption and investment framework and consider an investor who wants to select optimal consumption, investment and insurance policies in a regime switching economy. We allow not only the financial market but also the insurable risk to depend on the regime of the economy. The objective of the investor is to maximize his/her expected total discounted utility of consumption over an infinite time horizon. For the case of hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility functions, we obtain the first explicit solutions for simultaneous optimal consumption, investment and insurance problems when there is regime switching. Next we consider an insurer who wants to maximize his/her expected utility of terminal wealth by selecting optimal investment and risk control policies. The insurer’s risk is modeled by a jump-diffusion process and is negatively correlated with the capital gains in the financial market. In the case of no regime switching in the economy, we apply the martingale approach to obtain optimal policies for HARA utility functions, constant absolute risk aversion (CARA) utility functions, and quadratic utility functions. When there is regime switching in the economy, we apply dynamic programming to derive the associated Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation. Optimal investment and risk control policies are then obtained in explicit forms by solving the HJB equation. ii We provide economic analyses for all optimal control problems considered in this thesis. We study how optimal policies are affected by the economic conditions, the financial and insurance markets, and investor’s risk preference.

This paper studies the optimal investment and benefit payment strategies for target benefit (TB) pension plans. The pension fund receives contributions from active members and pays benefits to retirees. Meanwhile, the accumulated wealth is invested in financial market consisting of one risk-free asset and one risky asset, in which the risk-free interest rate is described by the Vasicek model. The general hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility is adopted to describe pension fund managers' risk preferences. Using the dynamic programming approach, we construct the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman (HJB) equation and obtain explicit expressions for optimal investment and benefit payment strategies using the Legendre transform-dual technique. Finally, numerical analysis is presented to illustrate the sensitivity of the optimal strategies to model parameters.

This paper introduces a mean field modeling framework for consumption-accumulation optimization. The production dynamics are generalized from stochastic growth theory by addressing the collective impact of a large population of similar agents on efficiency. This gives rise to a stochastic dynamic game with mean field coupling in the dynamics, where we adopt a hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility functional for the agents. A set of decentralized strategies is obtained by using the Nash certainty equivalence approach. To examine the long-term behavior we introduce a notion called the relaxed stationary mean field solution. The simple strategy computed from this solution is used to investigate the out-of-equilibrium behavior of the mean field system. Interesting nonlinear phenomena can emerge, including stable equilibria, limit cycles and chaos, which are related to the agent’s sensitivity to the mean field.

A continuous-time portfolio selection with options based on risk aversion utility function in financial market is studied. The different price between sale and purchase of options is introduced in this paper. The optimal investment-consumption problem is formulated as a continuous-time mathematical model with stochastic differential equations. The prices processes follow jump-diffusion processes (Weiner process and Poisson process). Then the corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation of the problem is represented and its solution is obtained in different conditions. The above results are applied to a special case under a Hyperbolic Absolute Risk Aversion (HARA) utility function. The optimal investment-consumption strategies about HARA utility function are also derived. Finally, an example and some discussions illustrating these results are also presented.

This paper studies the optimal investment-consumption decision under the constant elasticity of variance (CEV) model for an individual seeking to maximize the expected utility from cumulative consumption plus the expected utility from terminal wealth. Due to the fact that different individuals may have different risk preferences, we assume that the risk preference of an individual satisfies a hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility function. Generally speaking, power utility function, logarithmic utility function and exponential utility function widely used in investment theory are usually special cases of HARA utility function. By using the principle of dynamic programming and Legendre transform-dual technique, we obtain the explicit expression of the optimal investment-consumption decision. In addition, we derive the results under other utility functions as well and analyze some characteristics of the optimal portfolios and the optimal consumption decisions. A numerical simulation is presented to illustrate our results. Research results suggest that the optimal investment decisions between with consumption behavior and without it have considerable differences.

In this article we solve the problem of maximizing the expected utility of future consumption and terminal wealth to determine the optimal pension or life-cycle fund strategy for a cohort of pension fund investors. The setup is strongly related to a DC pension plan where additionally (individual) consumption is taken into account. The consumption rate is subject to a time-varying minimum level and terminal wealth is subject to a terminal floor. Moreover, the preference between consumption and terminal wealth as well as the intertemporal coefficient of risk aversion are time-varying and therefore depend on the age of the considered pension cohort. The optimal consumption and investment policies are calculated in the case of a Black-Scholes financial market framework and hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility functions. We generalize Ye (2008) (2008 American Control Conference, 356-362) by adding an age-dependent coefficient of risk aversion and extend Steffensen (2011) (Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 35(5), 659-667), Hentschel (2016) (Doctoral dissertation, Ulm University) and Aase (2017) (Stochastics, 89(1), 115-141) by considering consumption in combination with terminal wealth and allowing for consumption and terminal wealth floors via an application of HARA utility functions. A case study on fitting several models to realistic, time-dependent life-cycle consumption and relative investment profiles shows that only our extended model with time-varying preference parameters provides sufficient flexibility for an adequate fit. This is of particular interest to life-cycle products for (private) pension investments or pension insurance in general.

In this article we solve the problem of maximizing the expected utility of future consumption and terminal wealth to determine the optimal pension or life-cycle fund strategy for a cohort of pension fund investors. The setup is strongly related to a DC pension plan where additionally (individual) consumption is taken into account. The consumption rate is subject to a time-varying minimum level and terminal wealth is subject to a terminal floor. Moreover, the preference between consumption and terminal wealth as well as the intertemporal coefficient of risk aversion are time-varying and therefore depend on the age of the considered pension cohort. The optimal consumption and investment policies are calculated in the case of a Black-Scholes financial market framework and hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility functions. We generalize Ye (2008) (2008 American Control Conference, 356-362) by adding an age-dependent coefficient of risk aversion and extend Steffensen (2011) (Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 35(5), 659-667), Hentschel (2016) (Doctoral dissertation, Ulm University) and Aase (2017) (Stochastics, 89(1), 115-141) by considering consumption in combination with terminal wealth and allowing for consumption and terminal wealth floors via an application of HARA utility functions. A case study on fitting several models to realistic, time-dependent life-cycle consumption and relative investment profiles shows that only our extended model with time-varying preference parameters provides sufficient flexibility for an adequate fit. This is of particular interest to life-cycle products for (private) pension investments or pension insurance in general.

Given the existence of a Markovian state price density process, this paper extends Merton’s continuous time (instantaneous) mean-variance analysis and the mutual fund separation theory in which the risky fund can be chosen to be the growth optimal portfolio. The CAPM obtains without the assumption of log-normality for prices. The optimal investment policies for the case of a hyperbolic absolute risk aversion (HARA) utility function are derived analytically. It is proved that only the quadratic utility exhibits the global mean-variance efficiency among the family of HARA utility functions. A numerical comparison is made between the growth optimal portfolio and the mean-variance analysis for the case of log-normal prices. The optimal choice of target return which maximizes the probability that the mean-variance analysis outperforms the expected utility portfolio is discussed. Mean variance analysis is better near the mean and the expected utility maximization is better in the tails.