Many tests of asset pricing models address only the pricing predictions - but these pricing predictions rest on portfolio choice predictions which seem obviously wrong. This paper suggests a new approach to asset pricing and portfolio choices, based on unobserved heterogeneity. This approach...

High sentiment predicts low market returns and high arbitrage returns. This empirical evidence has important implications for portfolio optimization. Exploiting the eigenvalue-decomposition of the mean-variance portfolio, I show that its performance is the sum of two components: a market...

We develop a new method to optimize portfolios of options in a market where European calls and puts are available with many exercise prices for each of several potentially correlated underlying assets. We identify the combination of asset-specific option payoffs that maximizes the Sharpe ratio...

Estimates of agents' risk aversion differ between market studies and experimental studies. We demonstrate that the estimates can be reconciled through consistent treatment of agents' tendency for narrow framing, regarding integration of background wealth as well as across risky outcomes: Risk...

This paper examines the life-cycle impact of preference factors as experience, loss aversion, and narrow framing on explaining the empirical low stock market participation, low stock share conditional on participation, and positive relationships between financial wealth and participation as well...

One possible determinant of overpricing on asset markets is a lack of self-control abilities of traders. Self-control is the individual capacity to override or inhibit undesired behavioral tendencies such as impulses and to refrain from acting on them. We implement the first experiment that is...

To explore how speculative trading influences prices in financial markets, we conduct a laboratory market experiment with speculating investors (who do not collect dividends and trade only for capital gains) and dividend-collecting investors. Moreover, we operate markets at two different...

To explore how speculative trading influences prices in financial markets we conduct a laboratory market experiment with speculating investors (who do not collect dividends and trade only for capital gains) as well as dividend-collecting investors. We find that in markets with only speculating...