ON THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF MODELING NONLINEARITIES: THE ASSET PRICING EXAMPLE

Abstract

We investigate the economic importance of modeling nonlinearities in the dynamics of exogenous processes on the implied moments of endogenous variables in the context of the consumption-based asset pricing model. For this purpose, we model the endowment process alternatively as a linear autoregression and as a nonlinear threshold autoregression. The asset pricing model with nonlinear endowment is solved using quadrature techniques. A comparison of the moments of the model-implied rates of return in the two cases suggests that the economic impact of modeling nonlinearities is small.