Prior research shows that investors with smaller belief updates trade less actively, which positively affects their return performance. We examine the effect of different default frames of presenting past return information on investors' belief updating. In particular, we analyze whether...

Many models of investor behavior predict that investors prefer assets that they believe to have positively skewed return distributions. We provide a direct test of this prediction in a representative sample of the Dutch population. Using individual-level data on return expectations for a broad...

Can fluctuations in climate affect economic activity by altering beliefs about the economy? Using new data on subjective well-being and economic sentiment, this paper documents a causal effect of extreme temperatures (below 15 and above 85 degrees Fahrenheit) on beliefs about current and future...

Combining brokerage records and matching monthly survey measurements of a sample of individual investors from the Netherlands for the period April 2008 through March 2009, we examine how individual investors update their beliefs (return expectations and risk perceptions) and preferences (risk...

We develop a general framework for measuring biases in expectation formation. The method is based on the insight that biases can be inferred from the response of forecast errors to past news. Empirically, biases are measured by flexibly estimating the impulse response function of forecast...

Firm-level stock returns exhibit comovement above that in fundamentals, and the gap tends to be higher in developing countries. We investigate whether correlated beliefs among sophisticated, but imperfectly informed, traders can account for the patterns of return correlations across countries....

Firm-level stock returns exhibit comovement above that in fundamentals, and the gap tends to be higher in developing countries. We investigate whether correlated beliefs among sophisticated, but imperfectly informed, traders can account for the patterns of return correlations across countries....