Financial professionals have a great deal of discretion concerning how to relay information about the risk of financial products to their clients. This paper introduces a new risk tool to communicate the risk of investment products, and it examines how different risk-presentation modes influence...

In randomized field experiments, we embedded one- to two-sentence anchoring, goal-setting, or savings threshold cues in emails to employees about their 401(k) savings plan. We find that anchors increase or decrease 401(k) contribution rates by up to 1.9% of income. A high savings goal example...

Karlsson, Loewenstein and Seppi (2009) found that, following market downswings, investors are less likely to login to monitor their retirement portfolios. They concluded that, rather like (apocryphal) ostriches sticking their heads in the sand, investors avoid unpleasant information by reducing...

Recent research has demonstrated that choices between gambles are systematically influenced by the way they are expressed. Kahneman and Tversky's Prospect Theory (1979) explains many of these "framing" effects as shifts in the point of reference from which prospects are evaluated. This paper...