Essays on the Aggregate Effects of Frictions and Biases

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School of Business | Doctoral thesis (article-based)

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en

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171

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Aalto University publication series DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS, 89/2018

Abstract

This thesis studies the aggregate effects of portfolio frictions and biased beliefs. It consists of four diverse essays analyzing how such frictions affect business cycles, asset prices and the success probabilities of different types of agents.  The first essay studies the aggregate effects of a phenomenon known as "equity home bias". This refers to the empirically documented tendency of investors to overweight home stocks in equity portfolios. Intuitively home bias might lead to less risk sharing between countries and therefore strengthen business cycles. However, the essay shows that the welfare effects of home bias ultimately depend on the particular friction leading investors to overweight home stocks.  The second paper proposes a new policy to deal with the potential welfare costs associated with equity home bias and the lack of country-level risk sharing. It suggests that capital gains from home sources should be taxed at a higher rate than those from foreign sources. This is in contrast to standard arguments according to which capital gains from all sources should be taxed at the same rate.  The third paper studies the effects of biased beliefs on bond and currency returns. It proposes the first joint explanation for bond and currency markets based on expectational errors.  The last paper analyzes the effects of biased beliefs on the success probabilities of different types of agents. It derives new results related to biases concerning idiosyncratic sources of uncertainty.

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