There are robust gender differences in the domains of risk taking, overconfidence and competitionbehavior. However, as expertise tends to level these differences, we ask whether financialexperts still show gender dissimilarities in their domains of decision making? We analyzesurvey responses of...

Early warning systems (EWSs) are subject to restrictions that apply to exchangerates in general: fundamentals matter but their influence is small and unstable. Despitethis limitation four major lessons emerge: First, EWSs have robust forecastingpower and thus help policy-makers to prevent...

This paper offers new insights into the Italian mutual fund industry. Surveying Italian professionals, we do notonly reveal typical gender differences but also detect divergence to their German counterparts. While disclosingItalian professionals’ overly positive self-assessment in general, we...

The use of technical analysis by financial market professionals is not well understood. Thispaper thus analyzes survey evidence from 692 fund managers in five countries, the vast majorityof whom rely on technical analysis. At a forecasting horizon of weeks, technical analysis isthe most...

The G20 summits in 2009 have proposed major changes in governance of the InternationalMonetary Fund (IMF). Most important seems to be the acknowledgment that the IMF in itscurrent form lacks legitimacy and ownership. Accordingly, the G20 suggests a reallocation ofvoting shares to emerging and...

This study validates a survey-based measure of general risk attitude by an incentivecompatible experiment among more than 900 participants in rural Thailand. The surveymeasure of self-assessed risk attitude provides a useful approximation of the experimentallyderived risk attitude. This holds...

This paper examines the relative information shares of the Bund, i.e. the ten-year Euro bondfuture contract on German sovereign debt, versus two futures with shorter maturity. We findthat the Bund is most important but does not dominate price discovery. The other contractsalso have relevant –...

This paper examines the puzzlingly high unexploited momentum returns from a new perspective.We analyze characteristics of momentum traders in a sample of 692 fund managers. Wefind that momentum traders are “defined” by their short-term horizon, by a behavioural viewon the market and by a...

This paper examines whether recently introduced “village funds”, one of the largestmicrofinance programs ever implemented, improve access to finance. Village funds areanalyzed in a cross-sectional approach in relation to competing financial institutions. We find,first, that they reach the...

This paper provides evidence on the hypothesis that many behavioral finance patterns are sodeeply rooted in human behavior that they are difficult to overcome by learning. We test thison a target group which has undoubtedly very strong incentives to learn efficient behavior,i.e. fund managers....