We present subjects with an incentivized standard portfolio problem where the risky asset has a negative expected return. Individuals scoring high in the three dark triad personality traits Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy invest approximately 20% more into the risky asset. Out of...

The current study uses the German Socio Economic Panel to examine how the financial crisis of 2008-2010 impacted individuals' risk attitude. We find substantial changes in risk attitudes associated with the financial crisis which supports countercyclical risk aversion. We find that managers who...

This paper empirically assesses the selection effects and determinants of the demand for supple-mental health insurance that covers hospital and dental benefits in Germany. Our representative dataset provides doctor-diagnosed indicators of the individual's health status, risk attitude, demand...

We analyze the impact of mental health changes on individuals' willingness to take risks utilizing the nationally representative, longitudinal Socio Demographic Panel dataset of the German population. We employ regression-adjusted matching to identify the impact of mental health changes on...

This paper examines variable annuities (VA) that include a guaranteed minimum withdrawal lifetime benefit (GWLB). For a risk-averse retiree, we show that the basic VA/GWLB is unlikely to induce systematic withdrawals early in retirement, while it also provides useful protection in the case of...

Reinsurance is a transaction insurance firms use to hedge risk. Existing studies have only investigated the demand for reinsurance. Thus, we do not have direct evidence on whether the use of reinsurance creates value. Our study provides this evidence. We find a positive relation between the use...