We examine the influence of financial asset historical price path characteristics on investors' risk perception, return beliefs and investment propensity. To that end, we run a series of survey experiments in which we present various price patterns to individuals with vested interest in...

Stock trading apps have encouraged millions of people to begin micro-investing. While there is no doubt that investing is beneficial in the long-run, we demonstrate a downside to the micro-investing trend. Using a novel data set of stock trades from an app-based broker, we show that anchoring...

To understand how and why robo-advisors implement artificial intelligence (AI), we use evidence from structured interviews with C-level executives from a large group of robo-advisors. We find that robo-advisors see more potential in sales and client directed areas than in portfolio management....

We study how background health risk affects financial risk-taking. We elicit financial risk-taking behavior of a representative sample of more than 5,000 Germans in five panel waves during the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploiting variation in local infections across time and space, we find that an...

Contrary to the current state of research, we find almost complete reinvestment of dividends among the brokerage clients of a German online bank. Yet, investors do not reinvest most dividends immediately after payment. Initially, the bulk of dividends remains parked as cash in investors’...

Individuals invest in Environmental-Social-Governance (ESG)-assets not only because of (higher) expected returns but also driven by ethical and social considerations. Less is known about ESG-conscious investor subjective beliefs about crypto-assets and how these compare to traditional assets....

We survey retail investors at an online bank to study beliefs about the autocorrelation of aggregate stock returns, and how these beliefs shape investment decisions measured in administrative account data. Individuals' beliefs exhibit substantial heterogeneity and predict trading responses to...

We arranged for trained undercover men and women to pose as potential clients and visit all 65 local financial advisory firms in Hong Kong, China. At financial planning firms, but not at securities firms, women were more likely than men to receive advice to buy only individual or only local...

This paper examines the drivers of households’ sustainable investments. We documentthe presence of two types of sustainable investors: those that invest in sustainable assetsfor social reasons (social ) and those for financial reasons (financial). Both groupsare equally important but have...

We study how background health risk affects financial risk-taking. We elicit financial risk-taking behavior of a representative sample of more than 5,000 Germans in five panel waves during the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploiting variation in local infections across time and space, we find that an...