Though risk attitude is central to economics and finance, relatively little is known about how it is formed and how it changes over time. Based on US data from a dedicated psycho-social module on lifestyle of the 2010 Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we provide new evidence on the correlation...

Individual responsibility for portfolio construction is a central theme for defined contribution pensions, yet the rise of target-date funds is shifting investment decisions from workers back to employers. A complex choice architecture including automatic enrollment, reenrollment, and fund...

In this paper we investigate the influence of coupon structure on the financial behavior of Individual Investors in the fixed-income market. Examining circa 26 million decisions on 204 standard putable bonds with different coupon offerings our major findings are: (i) Products with a flat coupon...

This paper studies the interplay between firm investment and cash flow hedging decisions when the decision-maker has time-inconsistent preferences. We show that cash flow hedging acts as a double-edged sword. In some cases, cash flow hedging enhances firm value because the firm can thus invest...

Nous proposons une revue de la littérature récente centrée sur les effets de l'ambiguïté (ou incertitude non probabilisée) sur les comportements des acteurs sur les marchés financiers et sur le fonctionnement de ces derniers. Nous exposons les mécanismes théoriques de choix de...

Borrowing decisions affect most households, with large stakes and implications for subfields as varied as macroeconomics and industrial organization. I review theoretical and empirical work on household debt: its prevalence, level, growth, and composition, as well as various measures of consumer...

This experimental study investigates the impact of affective attitudes on risk and return estimates of stocks. Participants rate well-known blue-chip firms on an affective scale and forecast risk and return of the firms' stock. We find that positive affective attitudes lead to a prediction of...

We investigate the validity of purchasing power parity of 7 Middle East countries over January 1980 to August 2008 by applying the stationary test with a nonlinear Fourier function as proposed by Becker et al. (2006). This test allows us to study the presence of unknown smooth structural breaks...

To understand how real investors use their beliefs and preferences in investing decisions, we examine a panel survey of self-directed online investors at a UK bank. The survey asks for return expectations, risk expectations, and risk tolerance of these investors in three-month intervals between...

We revisit the sequential search problem by Hey (1987). In a 2x2 factorial design, varying fixed and random cost treatments with and without recall, we address open research questions that were originally stated by Hey (1987). Our results provide clear evidence for Hey’s (1987) conjecture that...