In a panel survey of individual investors, we show that investors’ second-order beliefs—their beliefs about the return expectations of other investors—influence investment decisions. Investors who believe others hold more optimistic stock market expectations allocate more of their own...

We construct a simple three person trust game with one trustor and two trustees. The trustor has the possibility to either trust both trustees or none, while the trustees make their decisions either sequentially or simultaneously, depending on the treatment. When trustees play sequentially,...