Università della Svizzera italiana

Inflation persistence, structural breaks and omitted variables : a critical view

Vaona, Andrea

Recent empirical contributions assess time changes in inflation persistence by means of simple autoregressive models. Their reliability is discussed in the light of the econometric literature on model misspecification and it is showed that their results can be misleading due to the omission of relevant variables.

Università della Svizzera italiana

Risk, robustness and knightian uncertainty in continuous-time, heterogenous agents, financial equilibria

Trojani, Fabio ; Vanini, Paolo

We analyze and compare analytically continuous-time financial equilibria where heterogeneous risk averse investors care about model misspecification through some preference for robustness and in the presence of a stochastic opportunity set. This incorporates a concern for model misspecification into equilibrium asset prices. Since no exact equilibrium computations are possible in this model...

Università della Svizzera italiana

A review of perturbative approaches for robust optimal portfolio problems

Trojani, Fabio ; Vanini, Paolo

In: Computational methods in decision-making, economics and finance, 2002, p. 109

Only a few intertemporal optimal consumption and portfolio problems in partial and general equilibrium can be solved explicitly. It is illustrated in the paper that perturbation theory is a powerful tool for deriving approximate analytical solutions for the desired optimal policies in problems where general state dynamics are admitted and a preference for robustness is present. Starting from the...

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...