Early-life transmission of preferences and characteristics has been identified as an explanation for why family members hold similar portfolios. New findings in this paper suggest social interaction with parents in an individual's adulthood is also an important contributor. We show investors...

We find that investors tend to hold the same securities as their parents. Instrumental variables that exploit social networks and a natural experiment based on mergers allow us to attribute the security-choice correlation to social influence within families. This influence runs not only from...

Formative experiences are a natural candidate for explaining heterogeneity in portfolio choice. However, identifying their impact is challenging because experiences can correlate with unobservables and they may lead to changes in wealth and other determinants of portfolio choice. We overcome...