Individuals are increasingly put in charge of their financial security after retirement. Moreover, the supply of complex financial products has increased considerably over the years. However, we still have little or no information about whether individuals have the financial knowledge and skills...

In this paper, we perform a robust analysis of the determinants of US swap spreads using a wide range of theoretically motivated candidate factors. We conduct an analysis in the frequency domain to see how the impacts of the candidate factors on the swap spread differ between different horizons....

Investor confidence is a necessary condition for the development of emerging markets. Investors recognize that since market-oriented reform policies may be reversed or hindered, they face the risk of ex post policy changes with redistributive impact on investment returns. We argue that a...

While there is a broad consensus in the literature that stock ownership is associated with individual characteristics, such as wealth, income, risk preferences, and financial literacy, less is known about the dynamics of stock market participation (SMP). Major fluctuations in SMP are oftentimes...

In this paper, we address the question whether the impact of default risk on equity returns depends on the financial system firms operate in. Using an implementation of Merton's option-pricing model for the value of equity to estimate firms' default risk, we construct a factor that measures the...

Since World War II, direct stock ownership by households has largely been replaced by indirect stock ownership by financial institutions. We argue that tax policy is the driving force. Using long time-series from eight countries, we show that the fraction of household ownership decreases with...