Optimal life insurance and annuity decision under money illusion

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Li, Wenyuan, Wei, Pengyu
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Li, Wenyuan
Wei, Pengyu
author_facet Li, Wenyuan
Wei, Pengyu
contents This paper investigates the optimal consumption, investment, and life insurance/annuity decisions for a family in an inflationary economy under money illusion. The family can invest in a financial market that consists of nominal bonds, inflation-linked bonds, and a stock index. The breadwinner can also purchase life insurance or annuities that are available continuously. The family's objective is to maximize the expected utility of a mixture of nominal and real consumption, as they partially overlook inflation and tend to think in terms of nominal rather than real monetary values. We formulate this life-cycle problem as a random horizon utility maximization problem and derive the optimal strategy. We calibrate our model to the U.S. data and demonstrate that money illusion increases life insurance demand for young adults and reduces annuity demand for retirees. Our findings indicate that the money illusion contributes to the annuity puzzle and highlights the role of financial literacy in an inflationary environment.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_20128
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimal life insurance and annuity decision under money illusion
Li, Wenyuan
Wei, Pengyu
Portfolio Management
This paper investigates the optimal consumption, investment, and life insurance/annuity decisions for a family in an inflationary economy under money illusion. The family can invest in a financial market that consists of nominal bonds, inflation-linked bonds, and a stock index. The breadwinner can also purchase life insurance or annuities that are available continuously. The family's objective is to maximize the expected utility of a mixture of nominal and real consumption, as they partially overlook inflation and tend to think in terms of nominal rather than real monetary values. We formulate this life-cycle problem as a random horizon utility maximization problem and derive the optimal strategy. We calibrate our model to the U.S. data and demonstrate that money illusion increases life insurance demand for young adults and reduces annuity demand for retirees. Our findings indicate that the money illusion contributes to the annuity puzzle and highlights the role of financial literacy in an inflationary environment.
title Optimal life insurance and annuity decision under money illusion
topic Portfolio Management
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.20128