We identify a component of monetary policy news that is extracted from high-frequency changes in risky asset prices. These surprises, which we call "risk shifts", are uncorrelated, and therefore complementary, to risk-free rate surprises. We show that (i) risk shifts capture the lion's share of...

Self-control failure is among the major pathologies (Baumeister et al. (1994)) affecting individual investment decisions which has hardly been measurable in empirical research. We use cigarette addiction identified from checking account transactions to proxy for low self-control and compare over...

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...

We use unique data fromfinancial advisers' professional exam scores and combine it with other variables to create an index of financial sophistication. Using this index to explain long-term stock return expectations, we find that more sophisticated financial advisers tend to have lower return...

Investors' return expectations are pivotal in stock markets, but the reasoning behind these expectations remains a black box for economists. This paper sheds light on economic agents' mental models - their subjective understanding - of the stock market, drawing on surveys with the US general...

Recent advances in natural language processing have contributed to the development of market sentiment measures through text content analysis in news providers and social media. The effectiveness of these sentiment variables depends on the implemented techniques and the type of source on which...

Using German and US brokerage data we find that investors are more likely to sell speculative stocks trading at a gain. Investors' gain realizations are monotonically increasing in a stock's speculativeness. This translates into a high disposition effect for speculative and a much lower...

This paper introduces endogenous preference evolution into a Lucas-type economy and explores its consequences for investors' trading strategy and the dynamics of asset prices. In equilibrium, investors herd and hold the same portfolio of risky assets which is biased toward stocks of sectors that...

We investigate the relationship between anchoring and the emergence of bubbles in experimental asset markets. We show that setting a visual anchor at the fundamental value (FV) in the first period only is sufficient to eliminate or to significantly reduce bubbles in laboratory asset markets. If...

Previous research has documented strong peer effects in risk taking, but little is known about how such social influences affect market outcomes. Since the consequences of social interactions are hard to isolate in financial data, we design an experimental asset market with multiple risky assets...