attention in ways that distort decision-making and trap people in poverty? We examine these issues using real-life shocks faced … reallocate attention to scarce-resource tasks. These results broaden our understanding of the impacts of uncertainty by exploring …

We use a novel and unique dataset to measure attention to securities—individuals’ stock-following over time (watchlists …)—to provide evidence that attention to securities reacts differently to various types of uncertainty. We find that market …-wide uncertainty, measured by the VIX index, depresses overall attention to securities. However, the effect of firm-level uncertainty …