Robust portfolio choice with sticky wages

TL;DR

This paper develops a robust model for life-cycle portfolio optimization with labor income, allowing for more realistic wage stickiness representations, correlation structures, and uncertainty in past wage influence, improving upon previous models.

Contribution

It introduces a flexible framework with Radon measure weights, accounts for correlation with stocks, and models uncertainty in wage influence, advancing the state of the art in portfolio choice with labor income.

Findings

Optimal policy remains robust under worst-case wage influence.

Incorporating correlation affects hedging demand.

Uncertainty in wage influence can be effectively modeled.

Abstract

We present a robust version of the life-cycle optimal portfolio choice problem in the presence of labor income, as introduced in Biffis, Gozzi and Prosdocimi ("Optimal portfolio choice with path dependent labor income: the infinite horizon case", SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, 58(4), 1906-1938.) and Dybvig and Liu ("Lifetime consumption and investment: retirement and constrained borrowing", Journal of Economic Theory, 145, pp. 885-907). In particular, in Biffis, Gozzi and Prosdocimi the influence of past wages on the future ones is modelled linearly in the evolution equation of labor income, through a given weight function. The optimisation relies on the resolution of an infinite dimensional HJB equation. We improve the state of art in three ways. First, we allow the weight to be a Radon measure. This accommodates for more realistic weighting of the sticky wages, like, e.g., on a discrete temporal grid according to some periodic income. Second, there is a general correlation structure between labor income and stocks market. This naturally affects the optimal hedging demand, which may increase or decrease according to the correlation sign. Third, we allow the weight to change with time, possibly lacking perfect identification. The uncertainty is specified by a given set of Radon measures $K$, in which the weight process takes values. This renders the inevitable uncertainty on how the past affects the future, and includes the standard case of error bounds on a specific estimate for the weight. Under uncertainty averse preferences, the decision maker takes a maxmin approach to the problem. Our analysis confirms the intuition: in the infinite dimensional setting, the optimal policy remains the best investment strategy under the worst case weight.