Using representative US investor data, we investigate whether automated financial advisors, also referred to as robo-advisors, reduce investors' demand for human financial advice offered by financial service providers. Our results provide a strong negative relationship between using...

We conduct a field experiment with clients of a German universal bank to explore the impact of peer information on sustainable retail investments. Our results show that information about peers' inclination towards sustainable investing raises the amount allocated to stock funds labeled...

We examine whether the informativeness of sell-side analyst reports depends on the strength of the regulatory environment of a country and the regulatory background of the institutional investors of a company. Our analyses are based on more than 600,000 analyst reports from 2005 through 2010...

Homophily — individuals' affinity for others like them — is a powerful principle which governs whose opinions they attend to. Using nearly 2,400 advisory meetings, we find that homophily has a significant positive impact on the likelihood of following financial advice. The increased...