We solve a rich life-cycle model of household decisions involving consumption of perishable goods and housing services, habit formation for housing consumption, stochastic labor income, stochastic house prices, home renting and owning, stock investments, and portfolio constraints. In line with...

We conduct a field experiment with clients of a German universal bank to explore the impact of peer information on sustainable retail investments. Our results show that information about peers' inclination towards sustainable investing raises the amount allocated to stock funds labeled...

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 failure that follows literature in psychology, suggesting that three...

Cryptocurrencies have received growing attention from individuals, the media, and regulators. However, little is known about the investors whom these financial instruments attract. Using administrative data, we describe the investment behavior of individuals who invest in cryptocurrencies with...

This paper studies why investors buy dividend-paying assets and how they time their consumption accordingly. We combine administrative bank data linking customers' consumption transactions and income to detailed portfolio data and survey responses on financial behavior. We find that private...

The disposition effect is implicitly assumed to be constant over time. However, drivers of the disposition effect (preferences and beliefs) are rather countercyclical. We use individual investor trading data covering several boom and bust periods (2001-2015). We show that the disposition effect...

Households regularly fail to make optimal financial decisions. But what are the underlying reasons for this? Using two conceptually distinct measures of time inconsistency based on bank account transaction data and behavioral measurement experiments, we show that the excessive use of bank...

Peer effects can lead to better financial outcomes or help propagate financial mistakes across social networks. Using unique data on peer relationships and portfolio composition, we show considerable overlap in investment portfolios when an investor recommends their brokerage to a peer. We argue...

In a field study with more than 1.500 customers of an online-broker we test what happens when investors receive repeated feedback on their investment success in a monthly securities account report. The reports show investors' last year's returns, costs, their current level of risk and their...

In a field study with more than 1.500 customers of an online-broker we test what happens when investors receive repeated feedback on their investment success in a monthly securities account report. The reports show investors' last year's returns, costs, their current level of risk and their...