Changes in communication technology have allowed for the expansion of data collection modes in survey research. The proliferation of the computer has allowed the creation of web and computer assisted auto-interview data collection modes. Virtual worlds are a new application of computer...

Respondent driven sampling (RDS) is a network sampling technique typically employed for hard-to-reach populations (e.g. drug users, men who have sex with men, people with HIV). Similar to snowball sampling, initial seed respondents recruit additional respondents from their network of friends....

This paper explores the relationship between risk attitude and asset diversification in household portfolios. We first examine the impact of manifested risk aversion on the total number of distinct assets held in a portfolio (naive diversification). The second part of the paper focuses on a more...

The empirical finding that entrepreneurs tend to invest a large share of their wealth in their own firms despite comparably low returns and high risk has become known as the private equity premium puzzle. This paper provides evidence supporting the hypothesis that lower risk aversion of...

This study appraises the role of gender in the behavior of individuals who make risky investments. The analysis bases on real-life investment data collected at an online market for peer-to-peer lending. The aim is to find out whether male and female investors differ in propensity for risk taking...

This paper empirically investigates the effects of differential income taxation on households' portfolio choice and asset allocation applying a two-stage budgeting model of asset demand to German survey data. The model is structured into the discrete asset choice and the continuous asset choice,...

This paper applies the Phillips and Sul (2007) method to test for convergence in stock returns to an extensive dataset including monthly stock price indices for five EU countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK) as well as the US over the period 1973-2008. We carry out the...

This study questions the popular stereotype that women are more risk averse than men in their financial investment decisions. The analysis is based on micro-level data from large-scale surveys of private households in five European countries. In our analysis of investment decisions, we directly...

This paper empirically investigates distributional and welfare effects of Germany's year 2000 income tax reform. The reform is simulated in an ex-ante behavioral microsimulation approach. Dead weight loss of changes in capital income taxation is estimated in a structural model for household...