Since the beginning of the 1990s, it has been widely expected that the implementation of the European Single Market would lead to a rapid convergence of Europe’s financial systems. In the present paper we will show that at least in the period prior to the introduction of the common currency...

Individual financial systems can be understood as very specific configurations of certain keyelements. Often these configurations remain unchanged for decades. We hypothesize that thereis a specific relationship between key elements, namely that of complementarity. Thus,complementarity seems to...

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...

We study the redistributive effects of inflation combining administrative bank data with an information provision experiment during an episode of historic inflation. On average, households are well-informed about prevailing inflation and are concerned about its impact on their wealth; yet, while...

Shortcomings revealed by experimental and theoretical researchers such as Allais (1953), Rabin (2000) and Rabin and Thaler (2001) that put the classical expected utility paradigm von Neumann and Morgenstern (1947) into question, led to the proposition of alternative and generalized utility...

Microeconomic modeling of investors behavior in financial markets and its results crucially depends on assumptions about the mathematical shape of the underlying preference functions as well as their parameterizations. With the purpose to shed some light on the question, which preferences...

We use minutes from 17,000 financial advisory sessions and corresponding client portfolio data to study how client involvement affects advisor recommendations and portfolio outcomes. We find that advisors confronted with acquiescent clients stick to standards and recommend expensive but well...

Cryptocurrencies have received growing attention from individuals, the media, and regulators. However, little is known about the investors whom these financial instruments attract. Using administrative data, we describe the investment behavior of individuals who invest in cryptocurrencies with...

Incentivized experiments in which individuals receive monetary rewards according to the outcomes of their decisions are regarded as the gold standard for preference elicitation in experimental economics. These task-related real payments are considered necessary to reveal subjects' "true...

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...