The comparative statics on asset prices based on bull and bear market measure

For single-period complete financial asset markets with representative investors, we introduce a bull market measure for uncertain state occurrence and its associated ordering between representative investors in markets based on their marginal rate of substitution between equilibrium consumption allocations among possible states. These concepts combine and generalize the likelihood-ratio-dominance relation between probability prospects of state occurrence and the Arrow-Pratt ordering of risk aversion in expected utility settings. By analyzing the comparative statics for bull market effects on equilibrium asset prices, we derive some monotone properties of the risk-free rate and discounted prices of dividend-monotone assets. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.