Can the freedom to choose how retirement funds are invested leave workers worse off? We analyze social risks of allowing choice, using the Social Security system as an example. Comparing a privatized alternative with the current system via simulation, we document that choice in both equity...

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"We show that abnormal returns to analysts' recommendations stem from both the ratings levels assigned and the changes in those ratings. Conditional on the ratings change, buy and strong buy recommendations have greater returns than do holds, sells, and strong sells. Conditional on the ratings...

We document economically large cross-sectional differences in the before- and after-fee returns earned by speculative traders by analyzing day traders in Taiwan from 1992 to 2006. We sort day traders based on their returns in year y and analyze their performance in year y+1; the 500 top-ranked...

We analyze 1,607 investors who switched from phone-based to online trading during the 1990s. Those who switch to online trading perform well prior to going online, beating the market by more than 2% annually. After going online, they trade more actively, more speculatively, and less profitably...

Individual investor trading results in systematic and economically large losses. Using a complete trading history of all investors in Taiwan, we document that the aggregate portfolio of individuals suffers an annual performance penalty of 3.8 percentage points. Individual investor losses are...