In this article we provide a brief account and interpretation of The Theory of Moral Sentiments showing that it departs fundamentally from contemporary patterns of thought in economics that are believed to govern individual behavior in small groups, and contains strong testable propositions...

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 analyze early-venture fundraising from dispersed, endogenously informed investors. An entrepreneur chooses a payoff-maximizing offering, and investors communicate their information by either contributing capital or by abstaining. The entrepreneur uses the information conveyed by fundraising...

We extend the theory and empirics in Chen, Hong, and Stein (2002) by assuming that investors subject to market sentiment hold a biased belief in the aggregate. With a dynamic multi-asset model, we predict that the breadth-return relationship can be either positive or negative depending on the...

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...