We examine the herd behavior among equity funds in Germany based on a large sample of funds from 2000 to 2009. We show that a large portion of the detected herding can be explained by identical trading among funds of the same investment company. However, we also find statistically significant...

The determinants of portfolio choice have been studied extensively in the field of household finance. In this paper we study the determinants of the decision to hold risky assets based on a novel dataset of German bank data. Our primary focus is the question whether East Germans di er in their...

Much empirical research in economics is based on data from household surveys. Panel surveys are particularly valuable for understanding dynamics and heterogeneity. A possible concern with panel surveys is that survey participation itself may alter subsequent behavior. We provide novel evidence...

To counteract aging populations, statutory pay-as-you-go pension systems are subject to fundamental reforms in many Western societies. Starting with cohort 1937, Germany introduced permanent pension deductions for early retirement. This paper examines the evolution of the profitability of...

Our study aims to uncover the roots of financial literacy. Better financial literacy predicts more informed savings and borrowing decisions in our sample, covering the urban middle-class in an emerging economy. We then test education at school, family background, parental teaching, and childhood...

We use the German re-unification as a natural experiment to understand drivers of financial literacy accumulation. With the transformation from a planned to a market-based economy in 1990, the incentives to invest in financial literacy were changed exogenously for East Germans and remained the...

We analyze whether the frequent use of credit lines is rational or influenced by behavioral traits of households. We consider the special case of Germany where credit lines on current accounts are available to 80% of the population. We document that the excessive usage of costly credit lines is...

This research challenges the stylized fact of a gender gap in financial literacy, i.e. the finding that women lag behind men in this respect. Our data which samples middle-class people from Bangkok does not show a gender gap, neither in regards to financial literacy nor regarding various kinds...

Based on the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP), we show that household consumption drops and saving rises significantly within four years after a child moves out of a household. Per capita consumption of parents is approximately leveled up to that of childless peers after all children are gone....

We extend gender research on risk behavior to betting markets. Our data set consists of all 5,136,660 bets in New Zealand from 2006 to 2009 and allows assigning each bet to individ-ual bettors. Women are much more prone to the favorite-longshot bias and suffer higher losses. Usually, betting on...