Never has the issue of sovereign credit ratings attracted such an interest by policy and opinion makers, bankers and journalists, or even the public opinion, as witnessed in the last couple of years. In spite of being accused of contributing to the instability of financial markets, credit rating...

The beliefs and strategies to be mobilized by individuals who are about to start their activity as investors in financial markets is an issue scarcely explored in the field of the sociology of finance. In this paper we present new evidence about the opinions of future investors recurring to a...

This paper studies how high-net-worth individual (HNWI) investors changed their risk preferences during the Global Financial Crisis (from 2007 to 2009) and how their asset allocation evolved in the same period. We had access to a confidential database from a Swiss international private bank with...