Large current account deficits, and the corresponding reliance on capital flows from abroad, can increase a country's vulnerability to periods of heightened risk and uncertainty. This paper develops a framework to evaluate such vulnerabilities. It highlights the central importance of two...

Using a unique data set that contains the complete ownership structure of the German stock market, we study the momentum and contrarian trading of different investor groups. Foreign investors and financial institutions, and especially mutual funds, are momentum traders, whereas private...

We study an investment experiment conducted with a representative sample of German households. Respondents invest in a safe asset and a risky asset whose return is tied to the German stock market. Experimental investments correlate with beliefs about stock market returns and exhibit desirable...

Do women invest differently than men? We contribute to the answer of this question by analysing the Panel on Household Finances (PHF) of the German Bundesbank. This representative panel collects a wide variety of behavioural and financial variables in the area of household finance. We find that...

While the positive return differential of the United States has attracted a lot of attention in the literature, the factors underlying the dynamics of the investment income balance have so far not been systematically investigated. Here, we propose a novel decomposition framework that accounts...

Using a simple sign test, we report new empirical evidence, taken from both the US and the German stock markets, showing that trading behavior substantially changed around Black Monday in 1987. It turned out that before Black Monday investors behaved more as in the momentum strategy; and after...

This paper analyzes how newly introduced transparency requirements for short positions affect investors' behavior and security prices. Employing a unique data set, which contains both public positions above and confidential positions below the regulatory disclosure threshold, we offer several...

We show that a common (identical across investors) irrationality in information processing can be enough to create nontrivial trade, using one of standard partial-equilibrium environments. We can attribute this trade to their common irrationality because we strip the investors and their...

We examine financial literacy in Germany and its relevance for financial well-being. Using data from the Panel on Household Finances collected in 2021, we show that about 62% of German households answer the Big Three financial literacy questions correctly. Those with lower education, who are out...

We examine the financial resilience of Austrian households, relating it to their experience of financial shocks earlier in life and to their financial literacy. We find that previous negative (positive) financial shocks are negatively (positively) related to financial resilience. Financial...