Using a representative online panel from the US, we examine how individuals' macroeconomic expectations causally affect their personal economic prospects and their behavior. To exogenously vary respondents' expectations we provide them with different professional forecasts about the likelihood...

Investors frequently hold equity in tax-exempt savings vehicles such as pension plans, despite the prediction of the standard model that they hold only bonds. We provide a new explanation for this empirical puzzle based on differences between pensions and taxable assets in the tax treatment of...

We study the interplay between tenure decisions, stock market investment and the public social security system. Housing equity not only serves a dual purpose as a consumption good and as an asset, but also provides insurance to buffer various risks in retirement. Our life cycle model captures...

We analyse a long panel of households' stock market beliefs to gain insights into the nature of their expectations formation processes. We classify respondents into one of five groups based on their data and estimate group-wise models of expectations formation. Two of the groups are at opposite...

It is often assumed that entrepreneurs retain more control of their venture when they opt for equity crowdfunding as compared to venture capital, notably because crowd investors are passive. We study whether crowd investors are indeed passive by analysing the cash flow and control rights crowd...

The investment-intensive growth model of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is often viewed as state-driven and ultimately unsustainable. But largely unnoticed, a shift has taken place. This paper examines the changes in investment patterns since 2003 and the potential impact of industrial...

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...

We use hand-collected data of 20,460 investment decisions and two distinct portals to analyze whether investors in equity crowdfunding direct their investments to local firms. In line with agency theory, the results suggest that investors exhibit a local bias, even when we control for family and...

I report historical prices and estimate financial returns to investing in rare books. My sample consists of 25 fiction titles recommended by Clifton Fadiman in his 1960 Lifetime Reading Plan. Relying on prices realized at American and British auction houses between 1975 and 2018, I use hedonic...

In this article, we examine how investor motives affect investment behavior in equity crowdfunding. In particular, we compare the investment behavior of sustainability-oriented with ordinary crowd investors on six leading equity crowdfunding platforms in Austria and Germany and investigate...