Household portfolios include risky bonds, beyond stocks, and respond to permanent labour income shocks. This paper brings these features into a life-cycle setting, and shows that optimal stock investment is constant or increasing in age before retirement for realistic parameter combinations. The...

A unique data set enables us to test the hypothesis that more economists than otherwise identical investors hold stocks due to informational advantages. We confirm that economists have a significantly higher probability of participating in the stock market than investors with any other...

Household portfolios include risky bonds, beyond stocks, and respond to permanent labour income shocks. This paper brings these features into a life-cycle setting, and shows that optimal stock investment is constant or increasing in age before retirement for realistic parameter combinations. The...

A setting in which customer-owned mutual companies converted to publicly listed firms created a plausibly exogenous shock to salience of stock ownership. We use this shock to identify the effect of stock ownership on political behavior. Using IV regressions, difference-in-differences analyses,...

We study an investment experiment conducted with a representative sample of German households. Respondents invest in a safe asset and a risky asset whose return is tied to the German stock market. Experimental investments correlate with beliefs about stock market returns and exhibit desirable...

There is ample empirical evidence documenting widespread financial illiteracy and limited pension knowledge. At the same time, the distribution of wealth is widely dispersed and many workers arrive on the verge of retirement with few or no personal assets. In this paper, we investigate the...

We provide a new explanation to the limited stock market participation puzzle. In deciding whether to buy stocks, investors factor in the risk of being cheated. The perception of this risk is a function not only of the objective characteristics of the stock, but also of the subjective...

While stock market expectations are among the most important primitives of portfolio choice models, their measurement has proved challenging for some respondents. We argue that the magnitude of measurement error in subjective expectations can be used as an indicator of the degree to which...

Despite of its importance for the economy, stock ownership by households is poorly under- stood. Recent research has uncovered that expectations of stock market returns by individuals strongly correlate with stock ownership. This paper reports new Öndings from a survey that collected data on...

Peer performance can influence the adoption of financial innovations and investment styles. We present evidence of this type of social influence: recent stock returns that local peers experience affect an individual's stock market entry decision, particularly in areas with better opportunities...