[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ssb/dispap/834.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Back to background risk?

Author

Listed:
Abstract
Estimating the effect of background risk on individual financial choices faces two challenges. First, the identification of the marginal effect requires a measure of at least one component of human capital risk that qualifies as "background" (a risk that an individual cannot diversify or avoid). Absent this, estimates suffer from measurement error and omitted variable bias. Moreover, measures of background risk must vary over time to eliminate unobserved heterogeneity. Second, once the marginal effect is identified, an evaluation of the economic significance of background risk requires knowledge of the size of all the background risk actually faced. Existing estimates are problematic because measures of background risk fail to satisfy the "nonavoidability" requirement. This creates a downward bias which is at the root of the small estimated effect of background risk. To tackle the identification problem we match panel data of workers and firms and use the variability in the profitability of the firm that is passed over to workers to obtain a measure of risk that is hardly avoidable. We rely on this measure to instrument total variability in individual earnings and find that the marginal effect of background risk is much larger than estimates that ignore endogeneity. We bound the economic impact of human capital background risk and find that its overall effect is contained, not because its marginal effect is small but because its size is small. And size of background risk is small because firms provide substantial wage insurance.

Suggested Citation

  • Andreas Fagereng & Luigi Guiso & Luigi Pistaferri, 2016. "Back to background risk?," Discussion Papers 834, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:ssb:dispap:834
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ssb.no/en/forskning/discussion-papers/_attachment/254274
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Constantinides, George M & Duffie, Darrell, 1996. "Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Consumers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(2), pages 219-240, April.
    2. Primiceri, Giorgio E. & van Rens, Thijs, 2009. "Heterogeneous life-cycle profiles, income risk and consumption inequality," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 20-39, January.
    3. Thomas Lemieux & W. Bentley MacLeod & Daniel Parent, 2009. "Performance Pay and Wage Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 1-49.
    4. Benjamin Friedrich & Costas Meghir & Lisa Laun & Luigi Pistaferri, 2018. "Earnings Dynamics and Firm-Level Shocks," 2018 Meeting Papers 536, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Bloom, Nicholas & Van Reenen, John, 2011. "Human Resource Management and Productivity," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 19, pages 1697-1767, Elsevier.
    6. Hamish Low & Costas Meghir & Luigi Pistaferri, 2010. "Wage Risk and Employment Risk over the Life Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1432-1467, September.
    7. Kimball, Miles S, 1993. "Standard Risk Aversion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(3), pages 589-611, May.
    8. Trond M. Døskeland & Hans K. Hvide, 2011. "Do Individual Investors Have Asymmetric Information Based on Work Experience?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(3), pages 1011-1041, June.
    9. Flavio Cunha & James Heckman & Salvador Navarro, 2005. "Separating uncertainty from heterogeneity in life cycle earnings," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 57(2), pages 191-261, April.
    10. Luis M. Viceira, 2001. "Optimal Portfolio Choice for Long‐Horizon Investors with Nontradable Labor Income," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 433-470, April.
    11. Arrondel, Luc & Calvo-Pardo, Hector, 2014. "Endogenous non-tradable earnings and households’ demand for risky assets," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 1414, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    12. Valery Polkovnichenko, 2007. "Life-Cycle Portfolio Choice with Additive Habit Formation Preferences and Uninsurable Labor Income Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 20(1), pages 83-124, January.
    13. Merton, Robert C., 1971. "Optimum consumption and portfolio rules in a continuous-time model," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 373-413, December.
    14. Erik Hurst & Geng Li & Benjamin Pugsley, 2014. "Are Household Surveys Like Tax Forms? Evidence from Income Underreporting of the Self-Employed," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 96(1), pages 19-33, March.
    15. Heaton, John & Lucas, Deborah J, 1996. "Evaluating the Effects of Incomplete Markets on Risk Sharing and Asset Pricing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(3), pages 443-487, June.
    16. Gábor Kátay, 2008. "Do Firms ProvideWage Insurance Against Shocks? – Evidence from Hungary," MNB Working Papers 2008/8, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary).
    17. Chamberlain, Gary, 1984. "Panel data," Handbook of Econometrics, in: Z. Griliches† & M. D. Intriligator (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 22, pages 1247-1318, Elsevier.
    18. Guiso, Luigi & Jappelli, Tullio & Terlizzese, Daniele, 1996. "Income Risk, Borrowing Constraints, and Portfolio Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 158-172, March.
    19. Edwards, Ryan D, 2008. "Health Risk and Portfolio Choice," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 26, pages 472-485.
    20. Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Jonathan A. Parker, 2002. "Consumption Over the Life Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 47-89, January.
    21. Joao F. Cocco, 2005. "Consumption and Portfolio Choice over the Life Cycle," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(2), pages 491-533.
    22. Smith, Richard J & Blundell, Richard W, 1986. "An Exogeneity Test for a Simultaneous Equation Tobit Model with an Application to Labor Supply," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(3), pages 679-685, May.
    23. Ana Rute Cardoso & Miguel Portela, 2009. "Micro Foundations for Wage Flexibility: Wage Insurance at the Firm Level," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 111(1), pages 29-50, March.
    24. N. Guertzgen, 2014. "Wage insurance within German firms: do institutions matter?," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 177(2), pages 345-369, February.
    25. Katja Kaufmann & Luigi Pistaferri, 2009. "Disentangling Insurance and Information in Intertemporal Consumption Choices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 387-392, May.
    26. Fatih Guvenen & Anthony A. Smith, 2014. "Inferring Labor Income Risk and Partial Insurance From Economic Choices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82, pages 2085-2129, November.
    27. S. Rao Aiyagari, 1994. "Uninsured Idiosyncratic Risk and Aggregate Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(3), pages 659-684.
    28. Georgarakos, Dimitris & Inderst, Roman, 2011. "Financial advice and stock market participation," Working Paper Series 1296, European Central Bank.
    29. John H. Cochrane (ed.), 2006. "Financial Markets and the Real Economy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2923.
    30. Darius Palia & Yaxuan Qi & Yangru Wu, 2014. "Heterogeneous Background Risks and Portfolio Choice: Evidence from Micro‐level Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(8), pages 1687-1720, December.
    31. Stefan Hochguertel, 2003. "Precautionary motives and portfolio decisions," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 61-77.
    32. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-475, March.
    33. Lagakos, David & Ordoñez, Guillermo L., 2011. "Which workers get insurance within the firm?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(6), pages 632-645.
    34. Honore, Bo E. & Hu, Luojia, 2004. "Estimation of cross sectional and panel data censored regression models with endogeneity," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 293-316, October.
    35. Heaton, John & Lucas, Deborah, 2000. "Portfolio Choice in the Presence of Background Risk," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(460), pages 1-26, January.
    36. John Heaton & Deborah Lucas, 2000. "Portfolio Choice and Asset Prices: The Importance of Entrepreneurial Risk," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(3), pages 1163-1198, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andreas Fagereng & Charles Gottlieb & Luigi Guiso, 2017. "Asset Market Participation and Portfolio Choice over the Life-Cycle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(2), pages 705-750, April.
    2. Barney Hartman‐Glaser & Hanno Lustig & Mindy Z. Xiaolan, 2019. "Capital Share Dynamics When Firms Insure Workers," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(4), pages 1707-1751, August.
    3. Chinhui Juhn & Kristin McCue & Holly Monti & Brooks Pierce, 2018. "Firm Performance and the Volatility of Worker Earnings," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(S1), pages 99-131.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andreas Fagereng & Luigi Guiso & Luigi Pistaferri, 2018. "Portfolio Choices, Firm Shocks, and Uninsurable Wage Risk," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(1), pages 437-474.
    2. Yongsung Chang & Jay Hong & Marios Karabarbounis & Yicheng Wang & Tao Zhang, 2022. "Income Volatility and Portfolio Choices," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 44, pages 65-90, April.
    3. Guiso, Luigi & Sodini, Paolo, 2013. "Household Finance: An Emerging Field," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1397-1532, Elsevier.
    4. Yongsung Chang & Jay Hong & Marios Karabarbounis & Yicheng Wang & Tao Zhang, 2022. "Income Volatility and Portfolio Choices," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 44, pages 65-90, April.
    5. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    6. Hubar, Sylwia & Koulovatianos, Christos & Li, Jian, 2020. "The role of labor-income risk in household risk-taking," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    7. Luigi Guiso & Luigi Pistaferri, 2020. "The insurance role of the firm," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 45(1), pages 1-23, March.
    8. Christensen, Peter Ove & Larsen, Kasper & Munk, Claus, 2012. "Equilibrium in securities markets with heterogeneous investors and unspanned income risk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(3), pages 1035-1063.
    9. Francisco Gomes & Alexander Michaelides, 2003. "Portfolio Choice With Internal Habit Formation: A Life-Cycle Model With Uninsurable Labor Income Risk," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 6(4), pages 729-766, October.
    10. Steven J. Davis & Felix Kubler & Paul Willen, 2006. "Borrowing Costs and the Demand for Equity over the Life Cycle," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 88(2), pages 348-362, May.
    11. Korniotis, George & Bonaparte, Yosef & Kumar, Alok, 2020. "Income Risk and Stock Market Entry/Exit Decisions," CEPR Discussion Papers 15370, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Robert Östling & Erik Lindqvist & David Cesarini & Joseph Briggs, 2016. "Wealth, Portfolio Allocations, and Risk Preference," 2016 Meeting Papers 1089, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Michael Haliassos & Alexander Michaelides, 2003. "Portfolio Choice and Liquidity Constraints," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(1), pages 143-177, February.
    14. Andrei Semenov, 2017. "Background risk in consumption and the equity risk premium," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 407-439, February.
    15. Luis M. Viceira, 2001. "Optimal Portfolio Choice for Long‐Horizon Investors with Nontradable Labor Income," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(2), pages 433-470, April.
    16. Luca Benzoni & Pierre Collin‐Dufresne & Robert S. Goldstein, 2007. "Portfolio Choice over the Life‐Cycle when the Stock and Labor Markets Are Cointegrated," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(5), pages 2123-2167, October.
    17. Xiaohong Angerer & Pok‐Sang Lam, 2009. "Income Risk and Portfolio Choice: An Empirical Study," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(2), pages 1037-1055, April.
    18. Kaustia, Markku & Conlin, Andrew & Luotonen, Niilo, 2023. "What drives stock market participation? The role of institutional, traditional, and behavioral factors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    19. Gene Amromin, 2008. "Precautionary Savings Motives and Tax Efficiency of Household Portfolios: An Empirical Analysis," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 22, pages 5-41, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Stephen Snudden, 2024. "Idiosyncratic Asset Return and Wage Risk of US Households," LCERPA Working Papers jc0144, Laurier Centre for Economic Research and Policy Analysis.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Background risk; Portfolio Choice; Labor Income Uncertainty;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ssb:dispap:834. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: L Maasø (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ssbgvno.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.