Rankings are a pervasive feature of the finance industry. Although they have no direct monetary consequences, rankings provide utility for intrinsic (positive self-image) and extrinsic (status) reasons. We recruit a unique subject pool of 204 financial professionals and investigate how anonymous...

In this paper we investigate how the experience of stock market shocks, like the COVID-19 crash, influences risk taking behavior. To isolate changes in risk taking from a variety of other confounding factors during stock market crashes, we ran controlled experiments with finance professionals in...

By running a battery of incentivized and non-incentivized experiments with fund managers from four countries in the European Union, we investigate the impact of fund managers' cognitive skills and economic preferences on the dynamics of the mutual funds they manage. First, we find that fund...

A pervasive feature in the finance industry is relative performance, which can include extrinsic (money), intrinsic (self-image), and reputational (status) motives. In this paper, we model a portfolio decision with two assets and investigate how reputational motives (i.e., the public...

A pervasive feature in the finance industry is relative performance, which can include extrinsic (money), intrinsic (self-image), and reputational (status) motives. In this paper, we model a portfolio decision with two assets and investigate how reputational motives (i.e., the public...

We investigate determinants of price expectations and satisfaction levels of financial professionals and students. In experiments with 150 professionals and 576 students, we systematically vary price paths according to the final return (positive or negative) and the way the final return is...

Two aspects of social context are central to the finance industry: (i) financial professionals make investment decisions for customers and (ii) social competition/rankings are a pervasive feature. We link both lines of literature to investigate professionals' risk-taking behavior when investing...

In this paper we investigate how volatility shocks influence investors' perceptions about a stock's risk, its future development, and investors' investment propensity. We ran artefactual field experiments with two participant pools (finance professionals and students) that had to take investment...

Risk-assessment and risk-taking in various forms are among the most important tasks financial professionals face in their daily work. A large body of experimental studies has shown a substantial effect of the decision domain (gain vs loss domain) on risk-taking, predominantly among students. In...