The Journal of Finance

The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.

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Variable Selection for Portfolio Choice

Published: 12/17/2002   |   DOI: 10.1111/0022-1082.00369

Yacine AÏT‐SAHALI, Michael W. Brandt

We study asset allocation when the conditional moments of returns are partly predictable. Rather than first model the return distribution and subsequently characterize the portfolio choice, we determine directly the dependence of the optimal portfolio weights on the predictive variables. We combine the predictors into a single index that best captures time variations in investment opportunities. This index helps investors determine which economic variables they should track and, more importantly, in what combination. We consider investors with both expected utility (mean variance and CRRA) and nonexpected utility (ambiguity aversion and prospect theory) objectives and characterize their market timing, horizon effects, and hedging demands.