In enhanced annuities, the annuity payment depends on one's state ofhealth at some contracted date while in "standard annuities", it does not.The focus of this paper is on an annuity market where "standard" and en-hanced annuities are oered simultaneously. When all insured know equallywell on...

Ein Privatanleger strukturiert sein Finanzvermögen in Abhängigkeitseiner individuellen Risikoeinstellung sowie der Höhe und der Risikobehaftung seinesGesamtkapitals bestehend aus Finanz-, Human- und Sozialkapital. Da sich die einzelnenBestandteile des Gesamtkapitals über den Zeitablauf...

This paper investigates whether self-employed households use consumer loans – inparticular instalment loans and overdrafts – to finance business activities. Controlling forfinancial and non-financial household variables we show that self-employed householdsparticularly use personal...

We conduct a framed field experiment with 245 employed persons (no students) as subjectsand a real tax, which is levied on the subjects’ income from working in our real effort task. Inour first three treatments, the net wage is constant but gross wages are subject to differentconstant marginal...

A deferred annuity typically includes an option-like right for thepolicyholder. At the end of the deferment period, he may either choose toreceive annuity payouts, calculated based on a mortality table agreed to atcontract inception, or receive the accumulated capital as a lump sum.Considering...

Empirical evidences show that investors tend to be biased toward investing indomestic (home bias) and local (local bias) stocks. Familiarity is considered to be one of thereasons. A similar concept was proposed by Goldstein and Gigerenzer (1999, 2002), known asthe recognition heuristic: “when...

Extensive field evidence shows individuals’ decisions in settings involving choiceunder uncertainty (e.g. savings and investment choices) depend on the decisions of their peers.One hypothesized cause of peer group effects is social interaction effects: an individual’s utilityfrom an action...

The tendency to underestimate the future value of a variable growing at a constant rate, anexample of exponential growth bias, has been linked to household financial decision making.We show that exponential growth bias and standard measures of financial literacy arenegatively correlated in a...

In July 2000, the Taipei City Government launched an anti-poverty program,Taipei Family Development Accounts, which drew heavily on Sherraden’sasset-based welfare theory, and was to provide matched savings accounts forlow-income families in the City. This paper presents the “income to...

We conduct controlled experiments in order to analyze individual trading behavior. Our results suggest that investors measure their gains relative to their initial wealth, and that this reference point together with past stock price changes determine the portfolio choices. Subjects choose a...