| Asset Pricing with Idiosyncratic Risk and Overlapping Generations (1999) | |||||||||||||||
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| A number of existing studies have concluded that risk sharing allocations supported by competitive, incomplete markets equilibria are quantitatively close to #rst-best. Equilibrium asset prices in these models have been di#cult to distinguish from those associated with a complete markets model, the counterfactual features of whichhave been widely documented. This paper asks if life cycle considerations, in conjunction with persistent idiosyncratic shocks which become more volatile during aggregate downturns, can reconcile the quantitative properties of the competitive asset pricing framework with those of observed asset returns. We begin by arguing that data from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics support the plausibilityofsuch a shock process. Our estimates suggest a high degree of persistence as well as a substantial increase in idiosyncratic conditional volatility coincident with periods of low growth in U.S. GNP. When these factors are incorporated in a stationary overlapping gener... | |||||||||||||||
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