Self-control failure is among the major pathologies (Baumeister et al. (1994)) affecting individual investment decisions but cannot be measured bias-free. We link the time-series of government-controlled tobacco prices to debit/credit card transaction histories to identify smoking as a proxy for...

Self-control failure is among the major pathologies (Baumeister et al. (1994)) affecting individual investment decisions which has hardly been measurable in empirical research. We use cigarette addiction identified from checking account transactions to proxy for low self-control and compare over...

Using German and US brokerage data we find that investors are more likely to sell speculative stocks trading at a gain. Investors' gain realizations are monotonically increasing in a stock's speculativeness. This translates into a high disposition effect for speculative and a much lower...

We use unique data fromfinancial advisers' professional exam scores and combine it with other variables to create an index of financial sophistication. Using this index to explain long-term stock return expectations, we find that more sophisticated financial advisers tend to have lower return...

We test whether investor mood affects trading with data on all stock market transactions in Finland, utilizing variation in daylight and local weather. We find some evidence that environmental mood variables (local weather, length of day, daylight saving and lunar phase) affect investors'...

Recent advances in natural language processing have contributed to the development of market sentiment measures through text content analysis in news providers and social media. The effectiveness of these sentiment variables depends on the implemented techniques and the type of source on which...

This paper studies why investors buy dividend-paying assets and how they time their consumption accordingly. We combine administrative bank data linking customers' consumption transactions and income to detailed portfolio data and survey responses on financial behavior. We find that private...

What are the aggregate and distributional consequences of the relationship between an individual's social network and financial decisions? Motivated by several well-documented facts about the influence of social connections on financial decisions, we build and calibrate a model of stock market...

Previous studies document a relationship between gambling at the aggregate level and investments in securities with lottery-like features. We combine data on individual gambling consumption with portfolio holdings and trading records to examine whether gambling and trading act as substitutes or...

Investors' return expectations are pivotal in stock markets, but the reasoning behind these expectations remains a black box for economists. This paper sheds light on economic agents' mental models - their subjective understanding - of the stock market, drawing on surveys with the US general...