This paper addresses a comparison between different approaches to time inconsistency for the mean-variance portfolio selection problem. We define a suitable intertemporal preferences-driven reward and use it to compare three common approaches to time inconsistency for the mean-variance portfolio selection problem over [Formula: see text]: precommitment approach, consistent planning or game theoretical approach, and dynamically optimal approach. We prove that, while the precommitment strategy beats the other two strategies (that is a well-known obvious result), the consistent planning strategy dominates the dynamically optimal strategy until a time point [Formula: see text] and is dominated by the dynamically optimal strategy from [Formula: see text] onwards. Existence and uniqueness of the break even point [Formula: see text] is proven.
ON TIME CONSISTENCY FOR MEAN-VARIANCE PORTFOLIO SELECTION
