Conditional Asset Allocation under Non-Normality: How Costly Is the Mean-Variance Criterion?
Preprint
- 1 February 2005
- preprint
- Published by Elsevier in SSRN Electronic Journal
Abstract
We evaluate how departure from normality may affect the conditional allocation of wealth. The expected utility function is approximated by a fourth-order Taylor expansion that allows for non-normal returns. Market returns are characterized by a joint model that captures the time dependency and the shape of the distribution. We show that under large departure from normality, the mean-variance criterion can lead to portfolio weights that differ significantly from those obtained using the optimal strategy accounting for non-normality. In addition, the opportunity cost for a risk-adverse investor to use the sub-optimal mean-variance criterion can be very large.Keywords
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