OPTIMAL PORTFOLIO CHOICE IN A BINOMIAL-TREE AND ITS CONVERGENCE

This study investigates the convergence of the optimal consumption and investment policies in a binomial-tree model to those in the continuous-time model of Merton (1969). We provide the convergence in explicit form and show that the convergence rate is of order ∆t, which is the length of time between consecutive time points. We also show by numerical solutions with realistic parameter values that the optimal policies in the binomial-tree model do not differ significantly from those in the continuous-time model for long-term portfolio management with a horizon over 30 years if rebalancing is done every 6 months.