We study an intertemporal consumption and portfolio choice problem under Knightian uncertainty in which agents preferences exhibit local intertemporal substitution. We also allow for market frictions in the sense that the pricing functional is nonlinear. We prove existence and uniqueness of the optimal consumption plan, and we derive a set of sufficient first-order conditions for optimality. With the help of a backward equation, we are able to determine the structure of optimal consumption plans. We obtain explicit solutions in a stationary setting in which the financial market has different risk premia for short and long positions.
We propose a new optimal consumption model in which the degree of addictiveness of habit formation is directly controlled through a consumption constraint. In particular, we assume that the individual is unwilling to consume at a rate below a certain proportion $0<alphale1$ of her consumption habit, which is the exponentially-weighted average of past consumption rates. $alpha=1$ prohibits the habit process to decrease and corresponds to the completely addictive model. $alpha=0$ makes the habit-formation constraint moot and corresponds to the non-addictive model. $0<alpha<1$ leads to partially addictive models, with the level of addictiveness increasing with $alpha$. In contrast to the existing habit-formation literature, our constraint cannot be incorporated in the objective function through infinite marginal utility. Assuming that the individual invests in a risk-free market, we formulate and solve an infinite-horizon, deterministic control problem to maximize the discounted CRRA utility of the consumption-to-habit process subject to the habit-formation constraint. Optimal consumption policies are derived explicitly in terms of the solution of a nonlinear free-boundary problem, which we analyze in detail. Impatient always consume above the minimum rate; thus, they eventually attain the minimum wealth-to-habit ratio. Patient individuals consume at the minimum rate if their wealth-to-habit ratio is below a threshold, and above it otherwise. By consuming patiently, these individuals maintain a wealth-to-habit ratio that is greater than the minimum acceptable level. Additionally, we prove that the optimal consumption path is hump-shaped if the initial wealth-to-habit ratio is either: (1) larger than a high threshold; or (2) below a low threshold and the agent is less risk averse. Thus, we provide a simple explanation for the consumption hump observed by various empirical studies.
We study the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing for a general financial market under Knightian Uncertainty. We adopt a functional analytic approach which require neither specific assumptions on the class of priors $mathcal{P}$ nor on the structure of the state space. Several aspects of modeling under Knightian Uncertainty are considered and analyzed. We show the need for a suitable adaptation of the notion of No Free Lunch with Vanishing Risk and discuss its relation to the choice of an appropriate filtration. In an abstract setup, we show that absence of arbitrage is equivalent to the existence of emph{approximate} martingale measures sharing the same polar set of $mathcal{P}$. We then specialize the results to a discrete-time framework in order to obtain true martingale measures.
We reconsider the microeconomic foundations of financial economics. Motivated by the importance of Knightian Uncertainty in markets, we present a model that does not carry any probabilistic structure ex ante, yet is based on a common order. We derive the fundamental equivalence of economic viability of asset prices and absence of arbitrage. We also obtain a modified version of the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing using the notion of sublinear pricing measures. Differe
In classic Kelly gambling, bets are chosen to maximize the expected log growth of wealth, under a known probability distribution. Breiman provides rigorous mathematical proofs that Kelly strategy maximizes the rate of asset growth (asymptotically maximal magnitude property), which is thought of as the principal justification for selecting expected logarithmic utility as the guide to portfolio selection. Despite very nice theoretical properties, the classic Kelly strategy is rarely used in practical portfolio allocation directly due to practically unavoidable uncertainty. In this paper we consider the distributional robust version of the Kelly gambling problem, in which the probability distribution is not known, but lies in a given set of possible distributions. The bet is chosen to maximize the worst-case (smallest) expected log growth among the distributions in the given set. Computationally, this distributional robust Kelly gambling problem is convex, but in general need not be tractable. We show that it can be tractably solved in a number of useful cases when there is a finite number of outcomes with standard tools from disciplined convex programming. Theoretically, in sequential decision making with varying distribution within a given uncertainty set, we prove that distributional robust Kelly strategy asymptotically maximizes the worst-case rate of asset growth, and dominants any other essentially different strategy by magnitude. Our results extends Breimans theoretical result and justifies that the distributional robust Kelly strategy is the optimal strategy in the long-run for practical betting with uncertainty.
We study dynamic allocation problems for discrete time multi-armed bandits under uncertainty, based on the the theory of nonlinear expectations. We show that, under strong independence of the bandits and with some relaxation in the definition of optimality, a Gittins allocation index gives optimal choices. This involves studying the interaction of our uncertainty with controls which determine the filtration. We also run a simple numerical example which illustrates the interaction between the willingness to explore and uncertainty aversion of the agent when making decisions.