Travail de recherche/Working paper
Résumé : The unconventional monetary policies implemented in the wake of the subprime crisis and the recent increase in inflation volatility have revived the debate on medium to long-term resurgence of inflation. This paper presents the optimal strategic asset allocation of an investor seeking to hedge inflation risk in different macroeconomic regimes. Using a vector-autoregressive model (VAR) for the joint dynamics of asset returns, inflation and other state variables, we investigate in the context of a simulation that allows for serial and cross-sectional inter-temporal dependencies the relationship between asset returns and different economic variables, at different investment horizons. We then study the optimal portfolio choice for the investor seeking to attain a fixed target for real returns on his investment horizon, with a shortfall probability constraint. We show that the strategic asset allocation differs sharply across regimes. In a volatile macroeconomic environment, inflation-linked bonds, equities, commodities and real estate play all an essential role in hedging a portfolio against inflation. In a more stable economic environment (“Great Moderation”), nominal bonds play the most significant role, with equities and commodities. An ambitious investor in terms of required real return should have a larger weighting in risky assets, especially commodities. We show the optimal allocation for each investor, depending on his target real return and tolerated shortfall probability.