Based on large-scale survey data from the 2006-2012 waves of the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS) we show that individual portfolio decisions are influenced by a variety of traits and facets traditionally investigated in the field of personality psychology. Two personality traits that taken...

Though risk attitude is central to economics and finance, relatively little is known about how it is formed and how it changes over time. Based on US data from a dedicated psycho-social module on lifestyle of the 2010 Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we provide new evidence on the correlation...

Individual investors' beliefs (return expectations and risk perceptions) drive investment decisions, with larger updates of beliefs leading to more active trading, hurting performance. We examine how framing of past performance information affects investors' belief formation. In particular, we...

There is a persistent association between health and portfolio choice, but hardly anything is known about the underlying sources of heterogeneity: what makes healthier individuals hold more risky assets? This paper uses rich Dutch longitudinal data to take into account and explain unobserved...

We use a panel dataset from the Dutch Household Survey, covering annually the period 1995-2012, to analyse whether individual financial risk taste changes over time with the background macroeconomic and financial conditions, as well as personal and subjective exposure to portfolio risk....

How to design an attractive annuity for an undeveloped market and how to assess the potential demand for such a product? We first conduct a discrete choice experiment among participants of a large-scale occupational defined contribution pension scheme in Hong Kong to identify desired product...

This paper provides the first joint analysis of household stockholding participation, location among stockholding modes, and participation spillovers. Our model matches observed participation, conditional and unconditional, and asset location patterns. We find that financial sophistication...

Investment behavior is traditionally investigated with the assumption that risky investment is on average advantageous. However, this may not always be the case. In this paper, we experimentally studied investment choices made by students and financial professionals under favorable and...

We develop a measure of (hybrid) defined benefit (DB) pension risk and show how this pension risk affects individual portfolio decisions. We find that people in riskier DB plans are, on average, not only less likely to hold equity but also hold a smaller share of their wealth in equity. This...

We study the decision problem of the optimal choice between home equity release products from a retired homeowner's perspective in the presence of longevity, long-term care, house price, and interest rate risk. The individual can choose to release home equity using reverse mortgages or home...