We use unique data fromfinancial advisers’ professional exam scores and combine it with other variables to create an index of financial sophistication. Using this index to explain long-term stock return expectations, we ...

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 ...

We test whether investor mood affects trading with data on all stock market transactions in Finland, utilizing variation in daylight and local weather. We find some evidence that environmental mood variables (local weather, ...

This paper investigates risk-taking in the liquid portfolios held by a large panel of Swedish twins. We document that the portfolio share invested In risky assets is an increasing and concave function of financial wealth, ...

We analyze the consequences of consumer education on prices and welfare in retail financial markets when some consumers are naive about shrouded addon prices and banks try to exploit this. Allowing for different information ...

"Household access to financial products is often conditioned on previous use. However, banning access when learning is possible may be discriminatory or counterproductive. The ""experiment"" of German reunification ...

Previous research has documented strong peer effects in risk taking, but little is known about how such social influences affect market outcomes. Since the consequences of social interactions are hard to isolate in financial ...

We examine the relationship between household wealth and self-control. Although self-control has been linked to consumption and financial behavior, its measurement remains an open issue. We employ a definition of self-control ...

This paper investigates whether exchanging the Social Security delayed retirement credit, currently paid as an increase in lifetime annuity benefits, for a lump sum would induce later claiming and additional work. We show ...

Based on a sample of university students, we provide field and laboratory evidence that a small scale training intervention has both a statistically and economically significant effect on subjective and objective assessments ...