Optimal investment and consumption models with non-linear stock dynamics

Abstract.

We study a generalization of the Merton's original problem of optimal consumption and portfolio choice for a single investor in an intertemporal economy. The agent trades between a bond and a stock account and he may consume out of his bond holdings. The price of the bond is deterministic as opposed to the stock price which is modelled as a diffusion process. The main assumption is that the coefficients of the stock price diffusion are arbitrary nonlinear functions of the underlying process. The investor's goal is to maximize his expected utility from terminal wealth and/or his expected utility of intermediate consumption. The individual preferences are of Constant Relative Risk Aversion (CRRA) type for both the consumption stream and the terminal wealth. Employing a novel transformation, we are able to produce closed form solutions for the value function and the optimal policies. In the absence of intermediate consumption, the value function can be expressed in terms of a power of the solution of a homogeneous linear parabolic equation. When intermediate consumption is allowed, the value function is expressed via the solution of a non-homogeneous linear parabolic equation.