The market for retail financial products (e.g. investment funds or insurances) is marred by information asymmetries. Clients are not well informed about the quality of these products. They have to rely on the recommendations of advisors. Incentives of advisors and clients may not be aligned,...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to measure overconfidence amongst finance professionals in domain relevant knowledge, and test for the impact of different debiasing methods. Design/methodology/approach – The approach used was survey field experiments with varying debiasing attempts....

We examine two views of the location choice of newly qualified personal financial advisors that recommend fund managers to retail investors. In one, sources of investment pools are the determinants of the location choice of financial advisors (the ‘source of funds’ hypothesis). In the other,...

The paper seeks to extend the findings of Gill and Biger (2009) related to gender differences and factors that affect stock investment decision of Western Canadian investors by examining the affects of: 1) investors' investment expertise; 2) investors' knowledge of 'neutral information'; 3)...

An advisor is supposed to recommend a financial product in the best interest of her client. However, the best product for the client may not always be the product yielding the highest commission (paid by product providers) to the advisor. Do advisors nevertheless provide truthful advice? If not,...

This study evaluates whether and how relationships influence acquirers’ choice of financial advisors in mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Specifically, it examines how acquirers’ relationships with their advisors, including their optimism of analyst recommendations and the outcome of their...

This paper examines the determinants of the choice of financial advisors and their impact on the announcement effects of US acquirers in cross-border M&As. Two hypotheses are tested: one pertains to the acquiring firms’ home preference in selecting financial advisors, and the other relates to...

Using a sample of U.S. mergers and acquisitions, this study evaluates how banking relationships influence acquirers’ choice of financial advisors. Specifically, it examines: i) acquirers’ previous relationships with advisors in various financial activities: M&A advisories, equity issuings...