This paper establishes a causal relation between an individual's decision of whether to own stocks and average stock market participation decision of the individual's community. We instrument for the average ownership of an individual's community with lagged average ownership of the states in...

"We exploit demographic variation to identify the effect of dividend demand on firm payout policy. Retail investors tend to hold local stocks and older investors prefer dividend-paying stocks. Together, these tendencies generate geographically-varying demand for dividends. Firms headquartered in...