Do stocks of admired companies yield admirable returns? Are increases in admiration followed by high stock returns, and how reliable is the relation between admiration and returns? These questions are answered by the authors based on their study of Fortune magazine's annual list "America's Most...

Today's portfolios are often composed of mental accounts, one for each of an investor's goals. They often also contain derivative securities. We develop a methodology for optimizing mental accounting portfolios that contain derivatives and other securities with non-normal distributions of...

This is the introduction to the book, “What Investors Really Want.” The book centers on behavioral finance, drawing from research in finance, psychology and marketing, and combining systematic studies with anecdotes and recent events. The book presents the cognitive errors that bedevil...

Cultural background affects the attitudes of immigrants long after they have settled in their new countries, and it affects the attitudes of their descendents as well. For example, levels of trust persist among immigrants to the United States, and relatively high levels of trust among immigrants...

This study explores the links between culture and risk tolerance, based on surveys conducted in 23 countries. Altogether, more than 4,000 individuals participated in the surveys.Risk tolerance is associated with culture. Risk tolerance is relatively low in countries where uncertainty avoidance...

Typical risk questionnaires aimed at helping advisors guide investors are deficient in five ways. First, each investor has a multitude of risk tolerances, one for each goal and its mental account. Probes for one global risk tolerance miss that multitude. Second, the links between answers to...