Constant relative risk aversion utility 2026-10-06
A constant relative risk aversion utility has . Up to a positive scale and an additive constant, it is for and for . Power utility gives multiplicative homogeneity of an investment value; logarithmic utility gives additive scaling.
Multiplicative habit utility 2026-10-06
Multiplicative habit utility modifies current consumption utility through its ratio to habit . With , , and , it is . Its homogeneity in has degree , while consumption holding habit fixed has effective relative risk aversion .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 41 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Normalize the constant relative risk aversion utility as . The printed specification of alone also permits an additive constant ; that would add to the value, so the stated homogeneity holds for the normalized value. SetMultiplying initial wealth, the historical maximum, dollar investments, and consumption by multiplies every term of the wealth equation by , including the tax term. It maps admissible policies bijectively and multiplies the normalized reward by . Therefore the value scales asThe historical maximum means when initially .
Inside the state region , the maximum is locally constant. The Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation isAt , the finite-variation contribution in the Itô formula is . The high-water mark tax boundary condition is consequentlyFor an increasing, strictly concave function of wealth, optimizing the two controls givesThe consumption convex conjugate isSubstitution of the homogeneity derivatives gives the reduced equation and boundary conditionThe controls in scaled variables are and .
Use the wealth-variable Legendre dualSince , the inverse map satisfies and . Inserting into the reduced Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation gives a linear Euler equationFor the Euler differential equation operator on the left, its action on is . Write . Under , the particular solution is . For the nondegenerate case , the two characteristic roots are , with because and . Thus the general solution also contains .
Here and the relevant dual domain is . The inverse wealth ratio must have as . The particular solution and the negative-root term have derivatives tending to zero, whereas has an unbounded derivative unless . Hence the admissible dual solution has the claimed formThe quadratic-root formulation presupposes a nonzero market price of risk. If , the dual equation becomes first order; it is treated directly or by an appropriate nondegenerate limit rather than by assuming two quadratic roots.
The inverse map and the tax boundary provide two equations at :Because , these becomeLet . Eliminating gives . Also , since puts strictly between the two roots. The derivative boundary then gives . Therefore the constants areThere is an important admissibility qualification in the printed conclusion. With ,The second term is negative, but decays faster than the first because . Direct differentiation at the boundary givesA wealth-variable Legendre dual of a concave value must be a convex function. Thus the printed smooth tax-paying solution requires , with the limiting case allowed as a degenerate boundary. The assumptions and do not imply this: for example , , , , and give and , hence negative boundary dual curvature.
For higher tax the investor can avoid raising the historical maximum. The wealth-cap investment boundary replaces the tax-paying equality by , alongside . Solving these equations givesThese are the same constants with replaced by . More generally the admissible two-regime expression usesin the constants, while the claimed formulas themselves describe the tax-paying regime. In the cap regime the portfolio volatility vanishes at and the consumption rate there is , so the wealth drift points inward and no new maximum is required. The remaining boundary inequality is , consistent with avoiding costly maximum increases. For , dual curvature is positive because the negative term in decays faster than the positive term. Thus this qualification repairs an actual missing parameter restriction rather than a TeX transcription error.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 41 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
The PDF prints in the conditioning of the value function. Taken literally, nonnegative wealth and the state-price budget constraint force both wealth and consumption to remain zero, and the utility for has value . The meaningful value function underlying the subsequent requests uses ; the following calculation makes that source correction explicit.
Write . Differentiating the exponentially weighted consumption habit gives the habit-state dynamicsMultiplying initial wealth, initial habit, investments, and consumption by multiplies the wealth and habit paths by . The ratio is unchanged, while . Thus the homogeneous value isThis is a multiplicative habit utility model: higher habit makes utility more negative at fixed consumption.
Set , , and . The instantaneous reward isFor smooth increasing, strictly concave wealth value, the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation isThe effective consumption shadow price with habit changes from to . For , consumption maximization givesFor the supremum is infinite, and for its zero supremum is approached only as consumption tends to infinity; a finite interior optimum therefore requires . The portfolio maximum is .
Let , , and defineThe homogeneity derivatives areConsequently , and the reward conjugate is . The reduced habit equation isFor completeness its feedback controls are and .
The wealth-variable Legendre dual satisfies , , and . The effective shadow price becomesTherefore the dual equation for multiplicative habit investment iswith . The dependence of the reward conjugate on and is the remaining nonlinearity.
When , habit is fixed and the equation becomes a linear Euler equationThe forcing is a pure power . Thus the Euler differential equation method gives a power particular solution plus the two homogeneous characteristic powers in the nondegenerate case. Economically, this is the Merton consumption-investment problem with effective relative risk aversion and a constant reward multiplier. Writingits value and controls areIndeed solves the dual equation, since its characteristic polynomial at equals . Unlike the case, the fixed habit creates no feedback coupling between the dual value and the shadow price of consumption.
When asset correlation varies with a traded market index, the index is both an asset and a state variable. Writing and optimizing Brownian portfolio exposures accounts for the cross derivative between wealth and . Power homogeneity reduces the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation to an ordinary differential equation in .