No Arabic abstract
In this paper,we study the individuals optimal retirement time and optimal consumption under habitual persistence. Because the individual feels equally satisfied with a lower habitual level and is more reluctant to change the habitual level after retirement, we assume that both the level and the sensitivity of the habitual consumption decline at the time of retirement. We establish the concise form of the habitual evolutions, and obtain the optimal retirement time and consumption policy based on martingale and duality methods. The optimal consumption experiences a sharp decline at retirement, but the excess consumption raises because of the reduced sensitivity of the habitual level. This result contributes to explain the retirement consumption puzzle. Particularly, the optimal retirement and consumption policies are balanced between the wealth effect and the habitual effect. Larger wealth increases consumption, and larger growth inertia (sensitivity) of the habitual level decreases consumption and brings forward the retirement time.
This paper studies the retirement decision, optimal investment and consumption strategies under habit persistence for an agent with the opportunity to design the retirement time. The optimization problem is formulated as an interconnected optimal stopping and stochastic control problem (Stopping-Control Problem) in a finite time horizon. The problem contains three state variables: wealth $x$, habit level $h$ and wage rate $w$. We aim to derive the retirement boundary of this wealth-habit-wage triplet $(x,h,w)$. The complicated dual relation is proposed and proved to convert the original problem to the dual one. We obtain the retirement boundary of the dual variables based on an obstacle-type free boundary problem. Using dual relation we find the retirement boundary of primal variables and feed-back forms of optimal strategies. We show that if the so-called de facto wealth exceeds a critical proportion of wage, it will be optimal for the agent to choose to retire immediately. In numerical applications, we show how de facto wealth determines the retirement decisions and optimal strategies. Moreover, we observe discontinuity at retirement boundary: investment proportion always jumps down upon retirement, while consumption may jump up or jump down, depending on the change of marginal utility. We also find that the agent with higher standard of life tends to work longer.
This paper studies an optimal investment and consumption problem with heterogeneous consumption of basic and luxury goods, together with the choice of time for retirement. The utility for luxury goods is not necessarily a concave function. The optimal heterogeneous consumption strategies for a class of non-homothetic utility maximizer are shown to consume only basic goods when the wealth is small, to consume basic goods and make savings when the wealth is intermediate, and to consume small portion in basic goods and large portion in luxury goods when the wealth is large. The optimal retirement policy is shown to be both universal, in the sense that all individuals should retire at the same level of marginal utility that is determined only by income, labor cost, discount factor as well as market parameters, and not universal, in the sense that all individuals can achieve the same marginal utility with different utility and wealth. It is also shown that individuals prefer to retire as time goes by if the marginal labor cost increases faster than that of income. The main tools used in analysing the problem are from PDE and stochastic control theory including viscosity solution, variational inequality and dual transformation.
This paper solves the optimal investment and consumption strategies for a risk-averse and ambiguity-averse agent in an incomplete financial market with model uncertainty. The market incompleteness arises from investment constraints of the agent, while the model uncertainty stems from drift and volatility processes for risky stocks in the financial market. The agent seeks her best and robust strategies via optimizing her robust forward investment and consumption preferences. Her robust forward preferences and the associated optimal strategies are represented by solutions of ordinary differential equations, when there are both drift and volatility uncertainties, and infinite horizon backward stochastic differential equations, coupled with ordinary differential equations, when there is only drift uncertainty.
In this paper, we develop a deep neural network approach to solve a lifetime expected mortality-weighted utility-based model for optimal consumption in the decumulation phase of a defined contribution pension system. We formulate this problem as a multi-period finite-horizon stochastic control problem and train a deep neural network policy representing consumption decisions. The optimal consumption policy is determined by personal information about the retiree such as age, wealth, risk aversion and bequest motive, as well as a series of economic and financial variables including inflation rates and asset returns jointly simulated from a proposed seven-factor economic scenario generator calibrated from market data. We use the Australian pension system as an example, with consideration of the government-funded means-tested Age Pension and other practical aspects such as fund management fees. The key findings from our numerical tests are as follows. First, our deep neural network optimal consumption policy, which adapts to changes in market conditions, outperforms deterministic drawdown rules proposed in the literature. Moreover, the out-of-sample outperformance ratios increase as the number of training iterations increases, eventually reaching outperformance on all testing scenarios after less than 10 minutes of training. Second, a sensitivity analysis is performed to reveal how risk aversion and bequest motives change the consumption over a retirees lifetime under this utility framework. Third, we provide the optimal consumption rate with different starting wealth balances. We observe that optimal consumption rates are not proportional to initial wealth due to the Age Pension payment. Forth, with the same initial wealth balance and utility parameter settings, the optimal consumption level is different between males and females due to gender differences in mortality.
This paper studies a dynamic optimal reinsurance and dividend-payout problem for an insurer in a finite time horizon. The goal of the insurer is to maximize its expected cumulative discounted dividend payouts until bankruptcy or maturity which comes earlier. The insurer is allowed to dynamically choose reinsurance contracts over the whole time horizon. This is a mixed singular-classical control problem and the corresponding Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation is a variational inequality with fully nonlinear operator and with gradient constraint. The $C^{2,1}$ smoothness of the value function and a comparison principle for its gradient function are established by penalty approximation method. We find that the surplus-time space can be divided into three non-overlapping regions by a risk-magnitude-and-time-dependent reinsurance barrier and a time-dependent dividend-payout barrier. The insurer should be exposed to higher risk as surplus increases; exposed to all the risks once surplus upward crosses the reinsurance barrier; and pay out all reserves in excess of the dividend-payout barrier. The localities of these regions are explicitly estimated.