Over the life-cycle, wealth holdings tend to be highest in the early part of retirement. The quality of financial decisions among older adults is therefore an important determinant of their financial security during the asset drawdown phase. This paper assesses how financial literacy shapes...

We study an investment experiment conducted with a representative sample of German households. Respondents invest in a safe asset and a risky asset whose return is tied to the German stock market. Experimental investments correlate with beliefs about stock market returns and exhibit desirable...

This paper explores the stock holdings of Spanish households. As found for other developed countries, the major part of Spanish households does not participate in the stock market. We analyse the impact that entry costs can have in this decision by looking at how wealth, education and a series...

We study an investment experiment conducted with a representative sample of German households. Respondents invest in a safe asset and a risky asset whose return is tied to the German stock market. Experimental investments correlate with beliefs about stock market returns and exhibit desirable...

This stochastic simulation analysis examines the risk characteristics of target-date funds focusing on the trade-offs between wealth creation and security. The dynamic portfolio adjustment of marketed target-date funds, with varied asset allocations, along age and various time horizons is shown....

This paper analyses the relationship between dispositional optimism and stock investments. Data are drawn from the second wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. Dispositional optimism is found to be a relevant predictor of the ownership of stocks as well as of the share...

Many models of investor behavior predict that investors prefer assets that they believe to have positively skewed return distributions. We provide a direct test of this prediction in a representative sample of the Dutch population. Using individual-level data on return expectations for a broad...

This paper examines empirically the effect of the level of personal bankruptcy protection in the US on households' demand for financial assets. A Chapter 7 bankruptcy allows protecting the home equity up to a certain limit or "exemption". Previous literature shows that such exemption biases...

We estimate the life-cycle profile of stock market participation and risky portfolio share. We address the classical identification problem by running the estimations in first differences, which allows us to estimate the age profiles without making any assumptions on time or cohort effects. We...

Do memories of highly emotional stock market crashes permanently affect the investment decisions of households? The Initial Public Offerings of Deutsche Telekom during 1996- 2000 provide an optimal base to address this question, as it is known for its emotional character and is reputedly "the...