For a given frequency of price adjustment, monetary non-neutrality is smaller if older prices are disproportionately more likely to change. This type of selection for the age of prices provides a complete characterization of price-setting frictions in time-dependent sticky-price models. Selection for older prices is weaker if: 1) the hazard function of price adjustment is less strongly increasing; 2) there is sectoral heterogeneity in price stickiness; 3) durations of price spells are more variable. Weaker selection for old prices implies larger monetary non-neutralities. In particular, the Taylor (1979) model exhibits maximal selection for older prices, whereas the Calvo (1983) model exhibits no selection.

Loss aversion has been used to explain why a high equity premium might be consistent with plausible levels of risk aversion. The intuition is that the different utility impact of wealth gains and losses leads loss-averse investors to behave similarly to investors with high risk aversion. But if so, should these agents not perceive larger gains from international diversification than standard expected-utility preference agents with plausible levels of risk aversion? They might not, because comovements in international stock markets are asymmetric: Correlations are higher in market downturns than in upturns. This asymmetry dampens the gains from diversification relatively more for loss-averse investors. We analyze the portfolio problem of such an investor who has to choose between home and foreign equities in the presence of asymmetric comovement in returns. Perhaps surprisingly, in the context of the home bias puzzle we find that the loss-averse investors behave similarly to those with standard expected-utility preferences and plausible levels of risk aversion. We argue that preference specifications that appear to perform well with respect to the equity premium puzzle should be subjected to this "test."--Loss aversion ; home bias ; asymmetric market comovements ; equity premium puzzle