In this paper we analyze whether key investor information documents (KIDs) provided by suppliers/issuers help retail investors to understand the key characteristics of financial products. KIDs are fact sheets composed to describe the characteristics of financial products in a brief, standardized...

We investigate US households' direct investment in stocks, bonds and liquid accounts and their foreign counterparts, in order to identify the different participation hurdles affecting asset investment domestically and overseas. To this end, we estimate a trivariate probit model with three...

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...

This paper explores the stock holdings of Spanish households. As found for other developed countries, the major part of Spanish households does not participate in the stock market. We analyse the impact that entry costs can have in this decision by looking at how wealth, education and a series...

We investigate the determinants of a household's decision on whether to invest in risky financial assets. Financial theory suggests that with increasing labor income risk, the reluctance of households to hold stocks increases. We propose to measure income risk as the observed variation of...

Based on a sample of university students, we provide field and laboratory evidence that a small scale training intervention has a both statistically and economically significant effect on subjective and objective assessments of financial knowledge. We also show that for a large part of students...

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...

This paper explores the relationship between self-declared risk aversion of private investors and their willingness to hold diversified portfolios of financial assets. The analysis is based on household survey data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) that provides a reliable measure of...

Stock market participation is monotonically related to IQ, controlling for wealth, income, age, and other demographic and occupational information. The high correlation between IQ, measured early in adult life, and participation, exists even among the affluent. Supplemental data from siblings,...

Frequent shifting of household portfolio composition may erode wealth due to poor market timing and transaction costs. If household preferences are stable, the optimal wealth maximizing strategy is periodically rebalancing to maintain a relatively constant ratio of investment assets to wealth...