Using a unique administrative data set from a large German commercial bank, this paper aims to ascertain the role of financial advisors in individual portfolios. Following on the heels of the ongoing regulatory and political debate as to the merits of financial advice, we focus in this paper on...

We use minutes from 17,000 financial advisory sessions and corresponding client portfolio data to study how client involvement affects advisor recommendations and portfolio outcomes. We find that advisors confronted with acquiescent clients stick to standards and recommend expensive but well...

The low level of financial literacy across households suggests that they are at risk of making suboptimal financial decisions. In this paper, we analyze the effect of investors’ financial literacy on their decision to demand professional, non-independent advice. We find that non-independent...