We study the effects of broadband internet use on the investment decisions of individual investors. A public program in Norway provides plausibly exogenous variation in internet use. Our instrumental variables estimates show that internet use causes a substantial increase in stock market...

The elegant economic picture of rational consumers achieving Pareto optimality through trade in decentralized self-organized markets is blurred by market imperfections and choices inconsistent with consumer self-interest. Behavioral economics has documented these errors in choice, and considered...

We propose that a person's desire to consume an object or possess an attribute increases in how much others want but cannot have it. We term this motive superiority-seeking, and show that it generates preferences for exclusion that help explain a host of market anomalies and make novel...

Prior research, primarily based on lab experiments, suggests that females might be more averse to competition than males and could be more inclined towards collaboration, instead. Were these findings to generalize to adults across the workforce, there could be profound implications for...

This paper explores the determinants of the level of, and trends over time in, Japan's household saving rate, with emphasis on the impact of the age structure of the population, and makes projections about future trends therein. The paper finds that Japan's household saving rate has not always...

We develop and estimate a life-cycle consumption savings model in which observed genetic variation is allowed to affect wealth accumulation through several distinct channels. We focus on genetic markers that predict educational attainment, aggregated into a predictive index called a polygenic...

In this paper, we use micro data on a large number of European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to examine the wealth accumulation (saving) behavior of the retired elderly in Europe. To summarize our main findings, we find that less than half of the...

How do aspirations influence investment decisions for people living in poverty? Does this change as peoples economic conditions improve? To answer these questions, we design a workshop teaching techniques to raise aspirations and plan to achieve them. We cross-randomise this with large...

We survey a large, representative sample of retail investors in China to elicit their memories of stock market investments and their return expectations. We merge this survey data with administrative transaction data to test a model in which investors selectively recall past experiences to form...