arXiv subjects

Kim Weston

Publications and source records attributed to Kim Weston.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Universal basic income in a financial equilibrium

Universal basic income (UBI) is a tax scheme that uniformly redistributes aggregate income amongst the entire population of an economy. We prove the existence of an equilibrium in a model that implements universal basic income. The economic agents choose the proportion of their time to work and earn wages that can be used towards consumption and investment in a financial market with a traded stock and annuity. A proportion of the earned wages is uniformly distributed amongst all agents, leading to interconnectedness of the agents' decision problems, which are already dependent on one another through the financial market. The decision problems are further entangled by Nash perceptions of labor; the agents respond to the labor choices of others and act upon their perceived income in their decision problems. The equilibrium is constructed and proven to exist using a backward stochastic differential equation (BSDE) approach for a BSDE system with a quadratic structure that decouples. We analyze the effects of a universal basic income policy on labor market participation, the stock market, and welfare. While universal basic income policies affect labor market participation and welfare monotonically, its effects on the stock market are nontrivial and nonmonotone.

q-fin.MF↗

arXiv2025

Radner equilibrium with population growth

We prove the existence of a Radner equilibrium in a model with population growth and analyze the effects on asset prices. A finite population of agents grows indefinitely at a Poisson rate, while receiving unspanned income and choosing between consumption and investing into an annuity with infinitely-lived exponential preferences. After establishing the existence of an equilibrium for a truncated number of agents, we prove that an equilibrium exists for the model with unlimited population growth. Our numerics show that increasing the birth rate reduces oscillations in the equilibrium annuity price, and when younger agents prioritize the present more than older agents, the equilibrium annuity price rises compared to a uniform demographic.

q-fin.MF↗

arXiv2023

A multi-agent targeted trading equilibrium with transaction costs

We prove the existence of a continuous-time Radner equilibrium with multiple agents and transaction costs. The agents are incentivized to trade towards a targeted number of shares throughout the trading period and seek to maximize their expected wealth minus a penalty for deviating from their targets. Their wealth is further reduced by transaction costs that are proportional to the number of stock shares traded. The agents' targeted number of shares is publicly known, making the resulting equilibrium fully revealing. In equilibrium, each agent optimally chooses to trade for an initial time interval before stopping trade. Our equilibrium construction and analysis involves identifying the order in which the agents stop trade. The transaction cost level impacts the equilibrium stock price drift. We analyze the equilibrium outcomes and provide numerical examples.

q-fin.MF↗

arXiv2022

Existence of an equilibrium with limited participation

A limited participation economy models the real-world phenomenon that some economic agents have access to more of the financial market than others. We prove the global existence of a Radner equilibrium with limited participation, where the agents have exponential preferences and derive utility from both running consumption and terminal wealth. Our analysis centers around the existence and uniqueness of a solution to a coupled system of quadratic backward stochastic differential equations (BSDEs). We prove that the BSDE system has a unique $\mathcal{S}^\infty\times\text{bmo}$ solution. We define a candidate equilibrium in terms of the BSDE solution and prove through a verification argument that the candidate is a Radner equilibrium with limited participation. This work generalizes the model of Basak and Cuoco (1998) to allow for a stock with a general dividend stream and agents with exponential preferences. We also provide an explicit example.

math.PR↗

arXiv2022

Endogenous noise trackers in a Radner equilibrium

We prove the existence of an incomplete Radner equilibrium in a model with exponential investors and an endogenous noise tracker. We analyze a coupled system of ODEs and reduce it to a system of two coupled ODEs in order to establish equilibrium existence. As an application, we study the impact of the endogenous noise tracker on welfare by comparing to a model with an exogenous noise trader. We show that the aggregate welfare in the endogenous noise tracker model is bigger for a sufficiently large stock supply, but the welfare comparison depends in a non-trivial manner on the other model parameters.

q-fin.MF↗

arXiv2020

Price impact equilibrium with transaction costs and TWAP trading

We prove the existence of an equilibrium in a model with transaction costs and price impact where two agents are incentivized to trade towards a target. The two types of frictions -- price impact and transaction costs -- lead the agents to two distinct changes in their optimal investment approach: price impact causes agents to continuously trade in smaller amounts, while transaction costs cause the agents to cease trading before the end of the trading period. As the agents lose wealth because of transaction costs, the exchange makes a profit. We prove the existence of a strictly positive optimal transaction cost from the exchange's perspective.

q-fin.MF↗

arXiv2018

An incomplete equilibrium with a stochastic annuity

We prove the global existence of an incomplete, continuous-time finite-agent Radner equilibrium in which exponential agents optimize their expected utility over both running consumption and terminal wealth. The market consists of a traded annuity, and, along with unspanned income, the market is incomplete. Set in a Brownian framework, the income is driven by a multidimensional diffusion, and, in particular, includes mean-reverting dynamics. The equilibrium is characterized by a system of fully coupled quadratic backward stochastic differential equations, a solution to which is proved to exist under Markovian assumptions.

q-fin.MF↗

arXiv2018

Existence of a Radner equilibrium in a model with transaction costs

We prove the existence of a Radner equilibrium in a model with proportional transaction costs on an infinite time horizon and analyze the effect of transaction costs on the endogenously determined interest rate. Two agents receive exogenous, unspanned income and choose between consumption and investing into an annuity. After establishing the existence of a discrete-time equilibrium, we show that the discrete-time equilibrium converges to a continuous-time equilibrium model. The continuous-time equilibrium provides an explicit formula for the equilibrium interest rate in terms of the transaction cost parameter. We analyze the impact of transaction costs on the equilibrium interest rate and welfare levels.

q-fin.MF↗

arXiv2015

Muckenhoupt's $(A_p)$ condition and the existence of the optimal martingale measure

In the problem of optimal investment with utility function defined on $(0,\infty)$, we formulate sufficient conditions for the dual optimizer to be a uniformly integrable martingale. Our key requirement consists of the existence of a martingale measure whose density process satisfies the probabilistic Muckenhoupt $(A_p)$ condition for the power $p=1/(1-a)$, where $a\in (0,1)$ is a lower bound on the relative risk-aversion of the utility function. We construct a counterexample showing that this $(A_p)$ condition is sharp.

q-fin.MF↗

arXiv2015

Stability of Utility Maximization in Nonequivalent Markets

Stability of the utility maximization problem with random endowment and indifference prices is studied for a sequence of financial markets in an incomplete Brownian setting. Our novelty lies in the nonequivalence of markets, in which the volatility of asset prices (as well as the drift) varies. Degeneracies arise from the presence of nonequivalence. In the positive real line utility framework, a counterexample is presented showing that the expected utility maximization problem can be unstable. A positive stability result is proven for utility functions on the entire real line.

q-fin.PM↗