Yizhou Xiao
Yizhou Xiao
Job Market Paper
I examine the conditions for the no-trade theorem to hold in multiperiod consumption settings and show it no longer holds in many reasonable scenarios. In situations where agents have different concerns for intertemporal substitution, information-based trade can be mutually acceptable because it enables agents to readjust their consumption profiles based on future consumption shocks. I show that the existing literature that finds no-trade results in various multiperiod consumption settings crucially depends on specific preference assumptions that lead to risk aversion dominating concerns for intertemporal substitution. The no-trade theorem fails to hold when a wider range of utility functions with a more important role for intertemporal substitution are considered. Intertemporal substitution bridges information-based trading and consumption-based asset pricing. Consumption-based asset pricing models are natural candidates to analyze information-based trading, and information-based trading affects the volatility of individual consumption processes. Quantitative analysis demonstrates that besides asset pricing implications, information-based trading related to intertemporal consumption smoothing can also explain a significant part of the trading volume observed in financial markets.