Università della Svizzera italiana

A note on robustness in Merton's model of intertemporal consumption

Trojani, Fabio ; Vanini, Paolo

The paper presents a robust version of a simple two-assets Merton's (1969) model where the optimal choices and the implied shadow market prices of risk for a representative robust decision maker (RDM) can be easily described. With the exeption of the log utility case, precautionary behaviour is induced in the optimal consumption-investment rules through a substitution of investment in risky...

Università della Svizzera italiana

A note on the three-portfolio matching problem

Trojani, Fabio ; Vanini, Paolo ; Vignola, Luigi

A typical problem arising in the financial planning for private investors consists in the fact that the initial investor’s portfolio, the one determined by the consulting process of the financial institution and the universe of instruments made available to the investor have to be matched/optimized when determining the relevant portfolio choice. We call this problem the three-portfolios...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Equilibrium asset pricing with time-varying pessimism

Sbuelz, Alessandro ; Trojani, Fabio

We present a flexible analytical framework that incorporates the equilibrium impact of a (possibly state dependent) sentiment for pessimism in continuous time intertemporal asset pricing. State dependent pessimism comes from a state dependent confidence in the reference belief on equity returns dynamics and implies conservative optimal policies precisely in states where such confidence is low. In...

Università della Svizzera italiana

A geometric approach to multiperiod mean variance optimization of assets and liabilities

Leippold, Markus ; Trojani, Fabio ; Vanini, Paolo

We present a geometric approach to discrete time multiperiod mean variance portfolio optimization that largely simplifies the mathematical analysis and the economic interpretation of such model settings. We show that multiperiod mean variance optimal policies can be decomposed in an orthogonal set of basis strategies, each having a clear economic interpretation. This implies that the...