This paper analyzes the relationship between individuals' locus of control and their savings behavior, i.e. wealth accumulation, savings rates, and portfolio choices. Locus of control is a psychological concept that captures individuals' beliefs about the controllability of life events and is a...

This paper bridges the financial market and the marriage market using a reference-dependent mechanism. Male-biased sex ratios induce families with sons to hold more risky assets, since competitive marital payment in a tight market raises the reference level of marriage expenditure for such...

Many models of investor behavior predict that investors prefer assets that they believe to have positively skewed return distributions. We provide a direct test of this prediction in a representative sample of the Dutch population. Using individual-level data on return expectations for a broad...

This paper analyzes the relationship between individuals' locus of control and their savings behavior, i.e. wealth accumulation, savings rates, and portfolio choices. Locus of control is a psychological concept that captures individuals' beliefs about the controllability of life events and is a...

This paper presents evidence suggesting men's (but not women's) risk and time preferences have systematically become sensitive to local economic conditions since the 2008 financial crisis. Studying longitudinal, nationally representative data for 22,579 Australian-based respondents in up to 11...

An empirically founded and widely established driving force in opinion dynamics is homophily i.e. the tendency of "birds of a feather" to "flock together". The closer our opinions are the more likely it is that we will interact and converge. Models using these assumptions are called bounded...

We document that an internal locus of control can be hindering in financial market situations, where short-term outcomes are determined by chance. The reason is that internally controlled individuals may tend to (over-)react to random outcomes. Our evidence is based on an experiment in which...

The empirical effects of place-based tax incentive schemes designed to aid low income communities are unclear. While a growing number of studies find beneficial effects on employment, there is little investigation into other behaviors of households affected by such programs. We analyze the...

How does international trade affect the popularity of governments and leaders? The recent backlash against globalization renders this question extremely topical. Yet, most previous work has looked for political effects of aggregate trade flows without decomposing into particular types of...

The purpose of this study is demonstrating why entrepreneurs should monitor the broad dollar index. This paper explains the reason why the broad dollar index has become a risk (leverage) gauge since 2008 using the Covered Interest Parity (CIP). CIP can be viewed as a reflection of the shadow...