Rankings are a pervasive feature of the finance industry. Although they have no direct monetary consequences, rankings provide utility for intrinsic (positive self-image) and extrinsic (status) reasons. We recruit a unique subject pool of 204 financial professionals and investigate how anonymous...

A pervasive feature in the finance industry is relative performance, which can include extrinsic (money), intrinsic (self-image), and reputational (status) motives. In this paper, we model a portfolio decision with two assets and investigate how reputational motives (i.e., the public...

A pervasive feature in the finance industry is relative performance, which can include extrinsic (money), intrinsic (self-image), and reputational (status) motives. In this paper, we model a portfolio decision with two assets and investigate how reputational motives (i.e., the public...

A pervasive feature in the finance industry is relative performance, which can include extrinsic (money), intrinsic (self-image), and reputational (status) motives. In this paper, we model a portfolio decision with two assets and investigate how reputational motives (i.e., the public...

Two aspects of social context are central to the finance industry: (i) financial professionals make investment decisions for customers and (ii) social competition/rankings are a pervasive feature. We link both lines of literature to investigate professionals' risk-taking behavior when investing...

We investigate determinants of price expectations and satisfaction levels of financial professionals and students. In experiments with 150 professionals and 576 students, we systematically vary price paths according to the final return (positive or negative) and the way the final return is...

We relate time-varying aggregate ambiguity (V-VSTOXX) to individual investor trading. We use the trading records of more than 100,000 individual investors from a large German online brokerage from March 2010 to December 2015. We find that an increase in ambiguity is associated with increased...

Self-control failure is among the major pathologies (Baumeister et al. (1994)) affecting individual investment decisions but cannot be measured bias-free. We link the time-series of government-controlled tobacco prices to debit/credit card transaction histories to identify smoking as a proxy for...

Psychology considers self-control failure, i.e., the inability to resist certain behaviors and impulses when seeking to achieve future goals as a major human pathology. The finance literature models and applies self-control failure to explain time-inconsistent behavior such as under-saving and...