The empirical finding that entrepreneurs tend to invest a large share of their wealth in their own firms despite comparably low returns and high risk has become known as the private equity premium puzzle. This paper provides evidence supporting the hypothesis that lower risk aversion of...

This paper explores the relationship between risk attitude and asset diversification in household portfolios. We first examine the impact of manifested risk aversion on the total number of distinct assets held in a portfolio (naive diversification). The second part of the paper focuses on a more...

The paper investigates the motives of activity (entry and exit) of Private Equity (PE) investors in European companies. Investment of a PE firm is not viewed unambiguously. First, it is claimed that PE investment is made for the sake of seeking short-term gains by taking control and utilizing...

This study questions the popular stereotype that women are more risk averse than men in their financial investment decisions. The analysis is based on micro-level data from large-scale surveys of private households in five European countries. In our analysis of investment decisions, we directly...

Simulations of agent-based models have shown that the stylized facts (unit-root, fat tails and volatility clustering) of financial markets have a possible explanation in the interactions among agents. However, the complexity, originating from the presence of non-linearity and interactions, often...

Simulations of agent-based models have shown that the stylized facts (unit-root, fat tails and volatility clustering) of financial markets have a possible explanation in the interactions among agents. However, the complexity, originating from the presence of non-linearity and interactions, often...

High-frequency financial data are characterized by a set of ubiquitous statistical properties that prevail with surprising uniformity. While these 'stylized facts' have been well-known for decades, attempts at their behavioral explanation have remained scarce. However, recently a new branch of...

In this paper we examine changes on investment decisions induced by the introduction of the Euro. There are two potential sources of portfolio reallocation. First, the introduction of the Euro diminished exchange rate risks within the EMU region, which relieved European investors from currency...

With reference to the class of asset pricing models with a market maker and mean-variance optimization of speculative agents, the note seeks to clarify the concepts behind the price adjustment rule, which are often treated somewhat carelessly in this literature. Calling attention to the...

This note is concerned with two recent agent-based models of speculative dynamics from the literature, one by Gaunersdorfer and Hommes and the other by He and Li. At short as well as long lags, both of them display an autocorrelation structure in absolute and squared returns that comes...