We find that investors tend to hold the same securities as their parents. Instrumental variables that exploit social networks and a natural experiment based on mergers allow us to attribute the security-choice correlation to social influence within families. This influence runs not only from...

A natural experiment in which customer-owned mutual companies converted to publicly listed firms created a plausibly exogenous shock to the stock market participation status of tens of thousands of people. We find the shock changed the way people vote in the affected areas, with a 10% increase...

This study documents patterns of investor behavior around Finnish rights issues. We find that shareholders of issuing companies lost at least amp;#8364;9.9 million in aggregate from 1995 to 2002 by exercising rights too early, selling rights in the open market below their intrinsic value, or leaving...

We find a strong positive link between past IPO returns and future subscriptions at the investor level in Finland. Our setting allows tracing this effect to the returns personally experienced by investors. The effect is not explained by patterns related to the IPO cycle, or wealth effects. This...

We find that investors tend to hold the same securities as their parents. Instrumental variables that exploit social networks and a natural experiment based on mergers allow us to attribute the security-choice correlation to social influence within families. This influence runs not only from...

Early-life transmission of preferences and characteristics has been identified as an explanation for why family members hold similar portfolios. New findings in this paper suggest social interaction with parents in an individual's adulthood is also an important contributor. We show investors...