A share paying a continuous dividend rate produces dollar gains . If its price follows a geometric Brownian motion with drift and its dividend yield is constant, its drift in an investment-consumption problem is their sum. The self-financing portfolio equation uses this total return, even if the agent consumes the dividends rather than reinvesting them. Omitting the dividend yield changes both the optimal stock fraction and the equilibrium interest rate.
Consider an investment-consumption problem with an independent one-way rate change of intensity from to . For a stock of constant drift and positive volatility , set , , and . In the finite-value regime , the prechange consumption coefficient is the unique positive root displayed above. The left side increases continuously from zero to infinity. Before the change, the value is , the stock fraction is , and consumption is . At the change these become the ordinary Merton consumption-investment problem controls for . The jump term in the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation is ; knowing only the marginal law of the change time does not justify that term without a conditional intensity assumption.
For a constant-coefficient single-asset investment-consumption problem with constant relative risk aversion utility, put and . When , the infinite-horizon value is and the optimal controls are and . The case uses logarithmic utility.
Use the physical dynamics of the Black-Scholes model, , with bank rate and . Write for the market price of risk. If is portfolio wealth, the dollar amount in stock, and the consumption rate, the budget dynamics are
Admissible controls are progressively measurable, locally integrable in the required drift and diffusion norms, and keep . Such a solvency restriction excludes doubling-type strategies. In a complete Brownian market, the investment-consumption problem is to maximize
where the utility functions are increasing and concave. A terminal-only problem omits the integral. Strict concavity gives uniqueness of optimal consumption and terminal wealth when an optimum exists.
The state-price density is
The Itô formula gives
Thus is a nonnegative local martingale, hence a supermartingale, yielding the state-price budget constraint
Conversely, a nonnegative consumption plan and terminal payoff satisfying budget equality and the necessary integrability can be financed in the Brownian complete market. Define
The Brownian martingale representation theorem for the total future budget supplies a stochastic-integral coefficient; comparing it with defines . This reconstructs the wealth equation with . Localization gives the representation for integrable positive budgets when an assumption is not available.
For smooth strictly concave utilities with the usual marginal-utility range, let and be the inverse marginal utility functions. The Lagrange-multiplier solution is
where makes the budget an equality. This is a global argument, not merely formal differentiation: the concave supporting-tangent inequality gives
with the analogous terminal inequality. Taking expectations, integrating, and applying the budget bound makes the difference in objectives nonpositive. Replication of the candidate budget proves attainability and optimality whenever these expectations are well-defined and finite. If the marginal-utility ranges or integrability conditions fail, existence must be established separately rather than inferred from the first-order equations.
A detailed example is constant relative risk aversion utility and , with , , , and . Put
The optimal plans from the marginal-utility equations are and . The normal distribution of gives, for ,
The budget therefore becomes , determining the multiplier explicitly. Independent Brownian increments in the conditional budget formula give . The diffusion coefficient of is , so matching the wealth diffusion determines the dollar stock holding. Consequently the finite-horizon power-utility investment and consumption optimum is
All candidate moments are finite on a finite horizon, since powers of a lognormal state-price density have finite moments. The budget and tangent argument above therefore verify optimality in this example, including admissibility and positive wealth.
For another verification of the formulas, the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation for a value function with discount measured from the current time is
Substitute . The two concave maximizations give the displayed controls, and the remaining equation is with , exactly solved by the formula above. Thus
For , interpret the integral as , so . Unlike the infinite-horizon Merton consumption-investment problem, finite horizons do not require . Consumption vanishes in the terminal-only formulation; then the integral term in is absent and the optimal stock fraction remains . Logarithmic utility is handled directly with inverse marginal utility and the same wealth-to-consumption formula at , with .
The joint generator. With again measured in dollars, portfolio wealth obeys
Its noise and the factor noise are driven by the same Brownian motion. Their quadratic covariation is , so the diffusion generator has a cross derivative. Dynamic programming and the Itô formula give
All coefficient functions in this formula are evaluated at . The cross derivative is essential: it gives intertemporal hedging demand. Normalizing CRRA utility as , where , the two optimizations give, at nonzero volatility,
and hence
Here .
Homogeneity and the reduced equation. Scaling initial portfolio wealth and both controls preserves the portfolio wealth constraint and multiplies the objective by the positive number . Thus
This expression is valid for both signs of : is negative when , but its portfolio wealth derivative is positive. Its derivatives are
Substitution yields
The resulting feedback is
The first portfolio term is myopic, and the second is intertemporal hedging demand.
Constant market price of risk. If and volatility is nonzero, the portfolio term becomes , so the magnitude of stock volatility disappears. Applying the power transformation of a complete-market investment equation cancels the squared-gradient terms and gives the further reduction
For its economic solution is . Thus
To see why this solves the investment-consumption problem, optimize directly over Brownian portfolio exposures, writing . The portfolio wealth equation becomes , which no longer contains . With nonzero volatility the same admissible exposure processes are available for every factor state, so the attainable wealth-consumption pairs, and therefore the value, are exactly those of the Merton consumption-investment problem. This also excludes extraneous solutions of the linear equation without imposing artificial factor boundary data.
The printed boundedness assumptions do not ensure nonzero volatility or a finite value. The unsimplified HJB equation remains the correct control equation at a zero of . There the hedge term vanishes; if , the riskless excess return gives arbitrage with unrestricted holdings. Under , a zero-volatility state offers only the bank exposure at that instant. For example , satisfies this relation for any chosen , but its value uses , not a fictitious nonzero risk premium. The constant-value formula using presupposes access to the Brownian exposure, with sufficient integrability for the corresponding holdings. Additive utility constants again only shift by a constant divided by .
Portfolio wealth Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
The value of an investment portfolio, obtained by summing each holding times its current asset price. Consumption removes money from portfolio wealth; a self-financing portfolio changes its value only through asset gains. Nonnegative portfolio wealth is a common admissibility restriction in an investment-consumption problem.
For a complete-market investment-consumption problem with constant relative risk aversion utility, the nonlinear wealth-homogeneity coefficient equation may contain . Writing cancels this gradient square against the one from . In the index-driven correlation model the result is , a linear differential equation; the positive economic solution gives consumption .