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...

A wave of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) was observed in the North American and European energy utilities market. We analyze the impact of these M&A transactions on market power, studying 139 takeovers of energy utilities by applying event study methodology. Stock price reactions of acquiring...

This paper provides the first evidence for empirical tests of the effect of rational expectations as well as behavioral biases, including among other animal spirits such as defined by Akerlof and Shiller (2009) on the variability of trading.We have used daily data for five international capital...

The characterization of financial returns depends heavily on probabilistic behavior, which can be ill-fitted, thus leading to inappropriate economic decisions concerning asset pricing, portfolio allocation and/or the measurement of market risk. In this paper, we propose a test to determine the...

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...

The disposition effect, i.e., the tendency to sell winning stocks too early and losing stocks too late is one of the most frequently observed and discussed biases of financial investors. We investigate in a laboratory experiment whether the option of automatic selling devices causally reduces...

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...

The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is theoretically incomplete in its demandside focus, risk-averse investors, and internally inconsistent homogeneous beliefs; is not conclusively supported empirically; and yet it legitimizes a notion that investors can earn higher returns by bearing...