Despite the ability to explain many puzzling phenomena in financial markets, direct tests of reference-dependent preferences of Kahneman and Tversky (1979, 1992) have mainly been conducted in experimental settings. We propose a novel test based on revealed preferences of real-world investors....

We argue that long-horizon return reversals [Debondt and Thaler (1985)] reflect a premium for downside risk. Consistent with this, we find that downside betas of past losers are significantly greater than downside betas of past winners, and the inclusion of downside beta in Fama-Macbeth...

When stock prices deviate from their fundamental values due to excess demand, investors anticipate reversals and trade in the options market to exploit the temporary misvaluation. This leads to options’ predictability of stock returns beyond the well-known informed trading channel. Using S&P...

Hedged mutual funds proliferated following the 2007-2009 financial crisis. They became particularly popular with financial advisors because of their alleged downside protection. Did these funds deliver what they promised? We examine the performance of these funds with a focus on the post-2009...

This paper discusses the appropriate methodology for the estimation of systematic downside risk. I find that the Hogan & Warren (1974) approach is the only one of several specifications of downside beta, that is consistent with both the original downside risk framework, as defined by Markowitz...

Using a large sample of over 1,000 students from a major, land-grant, public university in Massachusetts, we examine the financial literacy level of college students, and its implications on the repayment of student debt. We find low levels of financial literacy (39.5%), particularly among...

This paper examines the effect of value-added tax (VAT) rates on tax evasion in a setting with limited tax-shifting. I find that a large, unexpected reduction on the VAT rate of non- alcoholic restaurant sales, from 23% to 13%, implemented in Greece in August 2013, significantly increased...

We document that in semiformal economies, banks lend to tax-evading individuals based on the bank's assessment of the individual's true income. This observation leads to a novel approach to estimate tax evasion. We use microdata on household credit from a Greek bank, and replicate the bank...

We exploit the introduction of a foreclosure moratorium and a debt-discharge process in Greece that mitigate the repossession risk of primary residence mortgages to separate strategic from non-strategic delinquencies. We find that 37\% of delinquencies in our sample are strategic and document...