We investigate US households' direct investment in stocks, bonds and liquid accounts and their foreign counterparts, in order to identify the different participation hurdles affecting asset investment domestically and overseas. To this end, we estimate a trivariate probit model with three...

We study the relation between cognitive abilities and stockholding using the recent Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which has detailed data on wealth and portfolio composition of individuals aged 50+ in 11 European countries and three indicators of cognitive abilities:...

We document and study international differences in both ownership and holdings of stocks, private businesses, homes, and mortgages among households aged fifty or more in thirteen countries, using new and comparable survey data. We employ counter-factual techniques to decompose observed...

We examine the daily activity and performance of a large panel of individual investors in Sweden's Premium Pension System in the period 2000 to 2010. We find that active investors outperform passive investors, and that there is a causal effect of fund changes on performance. Chosen funds...

Retail investors pay over twice as much attention to local companies than non-local ones, based on Google searches. News volume and volatility amplify this attention gap. Attention appears causally related to perceived proximity: first, acquisition by a nonlocal company is associated with less...