Since the early nineties, the Dutch tax system allows for a tax-favored form of risk free savings through employer-sponsored savings plans (ESSPs). Under some conditions and up to a certain amount, the contributions to this planare tax-deductible, and the returns as well as the withdrawals are...

Using US data from June 1984 to July 1999, we show that the impact of firm-specificcharacteristics like size and book-to-price on future excess stock returns varies considerably overtime. The impact can be either positive or negative at different times. This time variation ispartially...

This paper investigates how social interactions impact the decision to participate in one’s local environment. Existing work often reports correlations between social interactions and local participation, but it is unclear what the causal direction of this relationship is. A key contribution...

Quadratic optimization for asset portfolios often leads to error maximization, with optimizers zooming in on large errors in the predicted inputs, that is, expected returns and risks. The consequence in most cases is a poor real-time performance. In this paper we show how to improve real-time...

Recent empirical evidence suggests that value and momentum strategies generate significantexcess returns in emerging markets. We confirm these results and extend them in severaldirections. First, we examine a broader range of stock selection strategies, including strategiesbased on analysts'...

An unprecedented number of investors are giving their financial advisors a mandate for socially responsible investing (SRI). Yet, the impact of SRI mandates on consumers is unclear. In a pre-registered lab-in-the-field experiment with 345 professional advisors, we find that advisors charge a...