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Abstract:
Theoretical models predict that overconfident investors will trade more than rational investors. We directly test this hypothesis by correlating individual overconfidence scores with several measures of trading volume of individual investors. Approximately 3,000 online broker investors were asked to answer an internet questionnaire which was designed to measure various facets of overconfidence (miscalibration, volatility estimates, better than average effect). The measures of trading volume were calculated by the trades of 215 individual investors who answered the questionnaire. We find that investors who think that they are above average in terms of investment skills or past performance (but who did not have above average performance in the past) trade more. Measures of miscalibration are, contrary to theory, unrelated to measures of trading volume. This result is striking as theoretical models that incorporate overconfident investors mainly motivate this assumption by the calibration literature and model overconfidence as underestimation of the variance of signals. In connection with other recent findings, we conclude that the usual way of motivating and modeling overconfidence which is mainly based on the calibration literature has to be treated with caution. Moreover, our way of empirically evaluating behavioral finance models - the correlation of economic and psychological variables and the combination of psychometric measures of judgment biases (such as overconfidence scores) and field data - seems to be a promising way to better understand which psychological phenomena actually drive economic behavior.

Overconfidence, Differences of Opinion, Trading Volume, Individual Investors, Investor Behavior, Correlation of Economic and Psychological Variables, Combination of Psychometric Measures of Judgment Biases and Field Data

Abstract:
Theoretical models predict that overconfident investors will trade more than rational investors. We directly test this hypothesis by correlating individual overconfidence scores with several measures of trading volume of individual investors (number of trades, turnover). Approximately 3000 online broker investors were asked to answer an internet questionnaire which was designed to measure various facets of overconfidence (miscalibration, the better than average effect, illusion of control, unrealistic optimism). The measures of trading volume were calculated by the trades of 215 individual investors who answered the questionnaire. We find that investors who think that they are above average in terms of investment skills or past performance trade more. Measures of miscalibration are, contrary to theory, unrelated to measures of trading volume. This result is striking as theoretical models that incorporate overconfident investors mainly motivate this assumption by the calibration literature and model overconfidence as underestimation of the variance of signals. The results hold even when we control for several other determinants of trading volume in a cross-sectional regression analysis. In connection with other recent findings, we conclude that the usual way of motivating and modelling overconfidence which is mainly based on the calibration literature has to be treated with caution. We argue that our findings present a psychological foundation for the differences of opinion explanation of high levels of trading volume. In addition, our way of empirically evaluating behavioral finance models - the correlation of economic and psychological variables and the combination of psychometric measures of judgment biases (such as overconfidence scores) and field data - seems to be a promising way to better understand which psychological phenomena drive economic behavior.

Overconfidence, Differences of Opinion, Trading Volume, Individual Investors, Investor Behavior, Correlation of Economic and Psychologic Variables, Combination of Experimental and Field Data

Abstract:
Theoretical models predict that overconfident investors will trade more than rational investors. We directly test this hypothesis by correlating individual overconfidence scores with several measures of trading volume of individual investors (number of trades, turnover). Approximately 3000 online broker investors were asked to answer an internet questionnaire which was designed to measure various facets of overconfidence (miscalibration, the better than average effect, illusion of control, unrealistic optimism). The measures of trading volume were calculated by the trades of 215 individual investors who answered the questionnaire. We find that investors who think that they are above average in terms of investment skills or past performance trade more. Measures of miscalibration are, contrary to theory, unrelated to measures of trading volume. This result is striking as theoretical models that incorporate overconfident investors mainly motivate this assumption by the calibration literature and model overconfidence as underestimation of the variance of signals. The results hold even when we control for several other determinants of trading volume in a cross-sectional regression analysis. In connection with other recent findings, we conclude that the usual way of motivating and modelling overconfidence which is mainly based on the calibration literature has to be treated with caution. We argue that our findings present a psychological foundation for the differences of opinion explanation of high levels of trading volume. In addition, our way of empirically evaluating behavioral finance models - the correlation of economic and psychological variables and the combination of psychometric measures of judgment biases (such as overconfidence scores) and field data - seems to be a promising way to better understand which psychological phenomena drive economic behavior.

Overconfidence, Differences of Opinion, Trading Volume, Individual Investors, Investor Behavior, Correlation of Economic and Psychologic Variables, Combination of Experimental and Field Data

Abstract:
Theoretical models predict that overconfident investors will trade more than rational investors. We directly test this hypothesis by correlating individual overconfidence scores with several measures of trading volume of individual investors (number of trades, turnover). Approximately 3000 online broker investors were asked to answer an internet questionnaire which was designed to measure various facets of overconfidence (miscalibration, the better than average effect, illusion of control, unrealistic optimism). The measures of trading volume were calculated by the trades of 215 individual investors who answered the questionnaire. We find that investors who think that they are above average in terms of investment skills or past performance trade more. Measures of miscalibration are, contrary to theory, unrelated to measures of trading volume. This result is striking as theoretical models that incorporate overconfident investors mainly motivate this assumption by the calibration literature and model overconfidence as underestimation of the variance of signals. The results hold even when we control for several other determinants of trading volume in a cross-sectional regression analysis. In connection with other recent findings, we conclude that the usual way of motivating and modeling overconfidence - which is mainly based on the calibration literature - has to be treated with caution. We argue that our findings present a psychological foundation for the 'differences of opinion' explanation of high levels of trading volume. In addition, our way of empirically evaluating behavioural finance models - the correlation of economic and psychological variables and the combination of psychometric measures of judgment biases (such as overconfidence scores) and field data - seems to be a promising way to better understand which psychological phenomena drive economic behaviour.

Overconfidence, differences of opinion, trading volume, individual investors, investor behaviour, correlation of economic and psychological variables, combination of psychometric measures of judgement biases and field data

Abstract:
This paper analyzes the relation between momentum strategies (strategies that buy stocks with high returns over the previous three to twelve months and sell stocks with low returns over the same period) and turnover (number of shares traded divided by the number of shares outstanding) for the German stock market. Our main finding is that momentum strategies are more profitable among high-turnover stocks. In contrast to U.S. evidence, this result is mainly driven by winners: high-turnover winners have higher returns than low-turnover winners. We present various robustness checks, long-horizon results, evidence on seasonality, and control for size-, book-to-market-, and industry-effects. We argue that our results are useful to empirically evaluate competing explanations for the momentum effect.

Asset Pricing, Momentum, Momentum Strategies, Return Predictability, Turnover, Trading Volume

Abstract:
This Paper analyses the relation between momentum strategies (strategies that buy stocks with high returns over the previous three to 12 months and sell stocks with low returns over the same period) and turnover (number of shares traded divided by the number of shares outstanding) for the German stock market. Our main finding is that momentum strategies are more profitable among high-turnover stocks. In contrast to US evidence, this result is driven mainly by winners: high-turnover winners have higher returns than low-turnover winners. We present various robustness checks, long-horizon results, evidence on seasonality, and control for size-, book-to-market-, and industry-effects. We argue that our results are useful to empirically evaluate competing explanations for the momentum effect.

Asset pricing, momentum strategies, return predictability, turnover

Abstract:
This paper analyzes the relation between momentum strategies (strategies that buy stocks with high returns over the previous three to 12 months and sell stocks with low returns over the same period) and turnover (number of shares traded divided by the number of shares outstanding) for the German stock market. Our main finding is that momentum strategies are more profitable among high-turnover stocks. In contrast to US evidence, this result is mainly driven by winners: high-turnover winners have higher returns than low-turnover winners. We present various robustness checks, long-horizon results, evidence on seasonality, and control for size-, book-to-market-, and industry-effects. We argue that our results are useful to empirically evaluate competing explanations for the momentum effect.

Abstract:
Why should aggregate investment of large conglomerates depend on personal characteristics of one single person, the CEO? In reality, corporate investment decision processes are complex. Are personal characteristics of all senior managers together perhaps a better predictor of corporate decisions than the CEOs' characteristics alone? This is the question we tackle in this paper empirically for the case of managerial optimism and corporate investment. In contrast to existing empirical studies we do not only focus on optimism measures of single managers like the CEO or CFO of a firm as investment decisions of firms are usually not made by only one single person. Instead, our optimism measure is based on the insider stock transaction behavior of all senior managers that they have to report to the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority. This paper is thus the first paper which compares the relative influence of CEO or CFO optimism compared to the optimism of all important managers. The main results can be summarized as follows. Managers are optimistic. Managers voluntarily increase their exposure to company specific risk more often than they reduce it, although they should, if anything, reduce their exposure. Furthermore, we find that firms with optimistic managers invest more. Moreover, the investment-cash flow sensitivity is higher for firms with optimistic managers. Consistent with theory, these results are stronger for financially constrained firms. As new insights, we find that optimism of all insiders has also explanatory power when compared to pure CEO optimism and that the higher managerial optimism, the lower the excess value of a company. We also identify moderating variables that determine when the CEO is more relevant for corporate investment (firm size, corporate governance, type of investment). CFO optimism has no explanatory power. These findings show that it is crucial to analyze how the exact decision process works within a firm.

Optimism, corporate investment, investment-cash flow sensitivity, behavioral corporate finance

Abstract:
In this paper, we propose a measure of individual investor sentiment that is derived from the market for bank-issued warrants. Due to a unique warrant transaction data set from a large discount broker we are able to calculate a daily sentiment measure and test whether individual investor sentiment is related to daily stock returns by using vector autoregressive models and Granger causality tests. We find that there exists a mutual influence of sentiment and stock market returns, but only in the very short-run (one and two trading days). Returns have a negative influence on sentiment, while the influence of sentiment on returns is positive for the next trading day. This result is mainly driven by experienced investors and investors with high levels of investor sophistication. Even though our sentiment measure circumvents several drawbacks of existing sentiment measures which are based on the closed-end fund discount, stock market transactions, the put-call ratio, or investor surveys, our results cast doubt on whether sentiment measures are useful to predict stock market returns over horizons of more than one day. Nevertheless, our analysis provides evidence on how individual investors trade and which determinants influence their expectations.

Sentiment, Bank-issued Warrants, Covered Warrants, Individual Investors, Investor Behavior, VAR models, Return Predictability, Stock Index Returns

Abstract:
Previous research indicates that lacking financial sophistication among private investors might be important in explaining the past strong growth in active management. Based on questionnaire data with more than 3,000 mutual fund customers, we therefore construct an objective financial literacy score and analyze the relationship between financial literacy and mutual fund investment behavior. Our paper shows that there is indeed a positive relationship between financial literacy and the likelihood to invest in low cost fund alternatives, such as index funds or Exchange Traded Funds (ETF). However, even the most sophisticated investors in our sample rely overwhelmingly on active funds. "Smart money" among smarter investors cannot explain this finding: There is only very weak evidence of superior fund selection abilities among financially more literate investors at best. In contrast, the results suggest that overconfidence is an important determinant of the decision to invest actively rather than passively. Smarter investors believe that they are better than average in their fund choices even though they are not. Overall, our results indicate that the lack of financial literacy among most mutual fund customers cannot completely explain the past growth in actively managed funds.

financial literacy, investor sophistication, mutual funds, mutual fund customers, better-than-average, miscalibration

Abstract:
Overconfidence can manifest itself in various forms. For example, people think that their knowledge is more precise than it really is (miscalibration) and they believe that their abilities are above average (better than average effect). The questions whether judgment biases are related or whether stable individual differences in the degree of overconfidence exist, have long been unexplored. In this paper, we present two studies that analyze whether professional traders or investment bankers who work for international banks are prone to judgment biases to the same degree as a population of lay men. We examine whether there are robust individual differences in the degree of overconfidence within various tasks. Furthermore, we analyze whether the degree of judgment biases is correlated across tasks. Based on the answers of 123 professionals, we find that expert judgment is biased. In most tasks, their degrees of overconfidence are significantly higher than the respective scores of a student control group. In line with the literature, we find stable individual differences within tasks (e.g. in the degree of miscalibration). However, we find that correlations across distinct tasks are sometimes insignificant or even negative. We conclude that some manifestations of overconfidence, that are often argued to be related, are actually unrelated.

Overconfidence, Judgment Biases, Individual Differences, Expert Judgment

Abstract:
Investors and academics increasingly criticize that various design features of executive stock option (ESO) plans reflect self-dealing by managers and the inability of corporate governance mechanisms in monitoring executives (managerial power hypothesis). We use a unique and not publicly available data set to investigate design features of ESO programs. The companies in our sample show a very large variation with respect to the characteristics of their ESO plans (e.g. in the use of relative performance targets that need to be met before options become exercisable). We study the relationship between the design of ESO plans and corporate governance structures to test the managerial power hypothesis. We document that when governance structures are weak, option plans are designed in a way desired by managers. When ownership concentration is low, firms more often have ESO plans that are favorable to executives. We also find that firms with fewer outside board members and weaker creditor rights more often have option plans that are favorable to managers. Favorable ESO plans usually coincide with large option packages.

Stock Option Programs, Program Design, Corporate Governance, Empirical Evidence

Abstract:
Studies analyzing return expectations of financial market participants like fund managers, CFOs or individual investors are highly influential in academia and practice. We argue and show that the results in these surveys above are easily influenced by the elicitation mode of return expectations. Surveys that ask for future stock price levels are more likely to produce mean reverting expectations than surveys that directly ask for future returns. Furthermore, we conduct a questionnaire study that explicitly analyzes whether the specific elicitation mode affects return expectations in the above direction. In our study, subjects were asked to state mean forecasts for seven time series. Using a between subject design, one half of the subjects was asked to state future price levels, the other group was directly asked for returns. We observe a highly significant framing effect. For upward sloping time series, the return forecasts stated by investors in the return forecast mode are significantly higher than those derived for investors in the price forecast mode. For downward sloping time series, the return forecasts given by investors in the return forecast mode are significantly lower than those derived for investors in the price forecast mode. We argue that this finding is consistent with behavioral theories of investor expectation formation based on the representativeness heuristic.

Return forecast, volatility forecast, confidence interval, individual investor, overconfidence, expertise, financial education, financial literacy, framing effect, investor surveys

Abstract:
Studies analyzing return expectations of financial market participants like fund managers, CFOs or individual investors are highly influential in academia and practice. Examples of such surveys in the U.S. are the Livingston Survey of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the Surveys of Consumers of the University of Michigan, the UBS/Gallup survey, and the Duke/CFO Business Outlook survey. An example from Germany is the ZEW Bankprognosen survey. We argue and show that the results in the surveys above are easily influenced by the elicitation mode of return expectations. Surveys that ask for future stock price levels (like the Livingston Survey) are more likely to produce mean reverting expectations than surveys that directly ask for future returns (like the Michigan Surveys of Consumers or the Duke/CFO Business Outlook survey). Furthermore, we conduct a questionnaire study that explicitly analyzes whether the specific elicitation mode affects return expectations in the above direction. In our study, subjects (students in business administration at two large German universities) were asked to state mean forecasts for seven time series. Using a between subject design, one half of the subjects was asked to state future price levels, the other group was directly asked for returns. We observe a highly significant framing effect. For upward sloping time series, the return forecasts stated by investors in the return forecast mode are significantly higher than those derived for investors in the price forecast mode. For downward sloping time series, the return forecasts given by investors in the return forecast mode are significantly lower than those derived for investors in the price forecast mode. We argue that this finding is consistent with behavioral theories of investor expectation formation that are based on the representativeness heuristic.

Return forecast, volatility forecast, confidence interval, individual investor, overconfidence, expertise, financial education, financial literacy, framing effect, investor surveys

Abstract:
Recently, researchers have gone a step further from just documenting biases of individual investors. More and more studies analyze how experience affects decisions and whether biases are eliminated by trading experience and learning. A necessary condition to learn is that investors actually know what happened in the past and that the views of the past are not biased. We contribute to the above mentioned literature by showing why learning and experience go hand in hand. Inexperienced investors are not able to give a reasonable self-assessment of their own past realized stock portfolio performance which impedes investors' learning ability. Based on the answers of 215 online broker investors to an internet questionnaire, we analyze whether investors are able to correctly estimate their own realized stock portfolio performance. We show that investors are hardly able to give a correct estimate of their own past realized stock portfolio performance and that experienced investors are better able to do so. In general, we can conclude that we find evidence that investor experience lessens the simple mathematical error of estimating portfolio returns, but seems not to influence their behavioral mistakes pertaining to how good (in absolute sense or relative to other investors) they are.

Return Estimation, Portfolio Return, Perceived Returns, Self-Assessment, Better Than Average Effect, Overconfidence, Financial Education, Financial Literacy, Learning, Experience

Abstract:
Our study analyzes the determinants of investors' risk taking behavior. We find that investors' risk taking behavior is affected by their subjective risk attitude and by the risk and return of an investment alternative. Our results also suggest that consistent with previous findings in the literature objective or historical return and volatility of a stock are not as good predictors of risk taking behavior as subjective risk and return measures. Moreover, we illustrate that overconfidence or more precisely miscalibration has an impact on risk behavior as predicted by theoretical models. However, our results regarding the effect of various determinants on risk taking behavior heavily depends on the domain the respective determinant is elicited. We interpret this as an indication for an extended domain specificity. In particular with the Markets of Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) coming into effect we believe practitioners could improve on their investment advising process by incorporating some of the determinants we argue to influence investment behavior.

Overconfidence, Optimism, Risk Attitude, Risk Perception, Risk Taking, Domain Specificity

Abstract:
Anecdotal evidence suggests and recent theoretical models argue that past stock returns affect subsequent stock trading volume. We study 3,000 individual investors over a 51 month period to test this apparent link between past returns and volume using several different panel regression models (linear panel regressions, negative binomial panel regressions, Tobit panel regressions). We find that both past market returns as well as past portfolio returns affect trading activity of individual investors (as measured by stock portfolio turnover, the number of stock transactions, and the propensity to trade stocks in a given month). After high portfolio returns, investors buy high risk stocks and reduce the number of stocks in their portfolio. High past market returns do not lead to higher risk taking or underdiversification. We argue that the only explanations for our findings are overconfidence theories based on biased self-attribution and differences of opinion explanations for high levels of trading activity.

Individual investors, investor behavior, trading volume, stock returns and trading volume, overconfidence, differences of opinion, discount broker, online broker, online banks, panel data, count data

Abstract:
In this study, we analyze whether volatility forecasts (judgmental confidence intervals) are influenced by the specific elicitation mode (i.e. whether forecasters have to state future price levels or directly future returns as upper and lower bounds). We present questionnaire responses of about 250 students from two German universities. Participants were asked to state median forecasts as well as confidence intervals for seven stock market time series. Using a between subject design, one half of the subjects was asked to state future price levels, the other group was directly asked for returns. Consistent with prior research we find that subjects underestimate the volatility of stock returns, indicating overconfidence. As a new insight, we find that the strength of the overconfidence effect in stock market forecasts is highly significantly affected by the fact whether subjects provide price or return forecasts. Volatility estimates are lower (and the overconfidence bias is thus stronger) when subjects are asked for returns compared to price forecasts.

Volatility forecast, confidence interval, individual investor, overconfidence

Abstract:
We investigate the consequences of shifting the role of auditors’ client from the management to the oversight board. In our experimental setting, each professional auditor is associated either with management, which has a preference for aggressive accounting, or with an oversight board, which has a preference for conservative accounting. Overall, we find that auditors are not influenced by client type in their audit opinions. Meanwhile, we observe that the effects of threats to independence depend on auditors’ client type. First, auditors with high client retention incentives are lenient towards the management when it is their client but object to it when their client is the oversight board. Second, auditors under high accountability pressure are lenient towards the management regardless of the type of their client. Implications are that both client retention incentives and accountability pressure represent distinctive threats to auditors’ independence and that the effectiveness of an audit committee in enhancing auditors’ independence depends on the underlying threat.

audit committee, auditor independence, client retention incentives, accountability pressure

Abstract:
Internal credit ratings are expected to gain in importance because of their potential use for determining regulatory capital adequacy and banks' increasing focus on the risk-return profile in commercial lending. Whereas the eligibility of financial factors as inputs for internal credit ratings is widely accepted, the role of non-financial factors remains ambiguous. Analyzing credit file data from four major German banks, we find evidence that the combined use of financial and non-financial factors leads to a more accurate prediction of future default events than the single use of each of these factors.

Credit risk, Credit ratings, Debt default, Probit analysis

Abstract:
Empirical research documents that temporary trends in stock price movements exist, so that riding a trend can be a profitable investment strategy. In this paper, we provide a thorough test of the trend recognition and forecasting ability of financial professionals who work in the trading room of a large bank, as well as those of novices (students). In an experimental study using a within-subject design, we analyze two ways of trend prediction that have analogues in the real world: probability estimates and confidence intervals (quantile estimates). We find that, depending on the type of task, either underconfidence (in probability estimates) or overconfidence (in confidence intervals) can be observed in the same trend prediction setting based on the same information. Furthermore, we find that the degree of overconfidence in both tasks is significantly positively correlated for all experimental subjects. These findings not only contribute to the literature on judgmental forecasting, but also have important implications for financial modeling. This paper demonstrates that a theorist has to be careful when deriving assumptions about the behavior of agents in financial markets from psychological findings.

trend recognition, forecasting, conservatism, overconfidence, professionals, financial modeling

Abstract:
Empirical research documents that temporary trends in stock price movements exist so that riding a trend can be a profitable investment strategy. In this paper, we provide a thorough test of the trend recognition and forecasting ability of financial professionals who work in the trading room of a large bank and novices (students). In an experimental study using a within-subject design, we analyze two ways of trend prediction that have analogues in the real world: probability estimates and confidence intervals (quantile estimates). We find that depending on the type of task either underconfidence (in probability estimates) or overconfidence (in confidence intervals) can be observed in the same trend prediction setting based on the same information. Furthermore, we find that the degree of overconfidence in both tasks is significantly positively correlated for all experimental subjects. These findings do not only contribute to the literature on judgmental forecasting but also have important implications for financial modeling. This paper demonstrates that a theorist has to be careful when deriving assumptions about the behavior of agents in financial markets from psychological findings.

trend recognition, forecasting, conservatism, overconfidence, professionals, financial modeling

Abstract:
Empirical research documents that temporary trends in stock price movements exist. Moreover, riding a trend can be a profitable investment strategy. Thus, the ability to recognize trends in stock markets influences the quality of investment decisions. In this Paper, we provide a thorough test of the trend recognition and forecasting ability of financial professionals who work in the trading room of a large bank and novices (MBA students). In an experimental study, we analyse two ways of trend prediction: probability estimates and confidence intervals. Subjects observe stock price charts, which are artificially generated by either a process with positive or negative trend and are asked to provide subjective probability estimates for the trend. In addition, the subjects were asked to state confidence intervals for the development of the chart in the future. We find that depending on the type of task either underconfidence (in probability estimates) or overconfidence (in confidence intervals) can be observed in the same trend prediction setting based on the same information. Underconfidence in probability estimates is more pronounced the longer the price history observed by subjects and the higher the discriminability of the price path generating processes. Furthermore, we find that the degree of overconfidence in both tasks is significantly positively correlated for all experimental subjects whereas performance measures are not. Our study has important implications for financial modelling. We argue that the question which psychological bias should be incorporated into a model does not depend on a specific informational setting but solely on the specific task considered. This Paper demonstrates that a theorist has to be careful when deriving assumptions about the behaviour of agents in financial markets from psychological findings.

Trend recognition, forecasting, conservatism, overconfidence, professionals, financial modelling

Abstract:
This paper investigates the determinants of the dividend decision. We examine the impact of fundamental variables like earnings, size, or leverage, as well as the effect of stock price movements. Using a sample of German companies, we find a negative relation between the probability for dividend increases and the performance of the firm's shares. Dividend increasing companies performed worse than the overall stock market or corporations that keep dividends constant. In addition, we demonstrate that the documented pattern cannot be explained by models of asymmetric information or catering considerations. Thus, our results suggest that in Germany, where share repurchases were highly restricted, dividends are increased as a compensation for the poor returns of the current shareholders.

Dividend Policy, Dividend Increases, Market Movements

Abstract:
We investigate the link between account activity and information production on borrower quality. Based on a unique data set, we find that credit line usage, limit violations, and cash inflows exhibit abnormal patterns approximately 12 months before default events. Measures of account activity substantially improve default predictions and are especially helpful for monitoring small businesses and individuals. We also find that the early warning indications from account activity result in higher loan spreads, and in a higher likelihood of limit reductions and complete write-offs. Our results highlight that the information on account activity provides banks with a real-time window into the borrower’s cash flows, creating a unique advantage over non-bank lenders and capital markets.

Banks, Relationship lending, Checking accounts, Lines of credit, Credit ratings, Bankruptcy

Abstract:
This study uses data that offers the unique opportunity to analyze how an unprecedented crisis suchas the September 11 tragedy influences expected returns and volatility forecasts of individual investors. Via e-mail, we asked a randomly selected group of individual investors with accounts at a German online broker to answer an internet questionnaire at the beginning of August 2001. A second e-mail to the investors who had not yet answered, scheduled five weeks later, was postponed due to the terror attacks until September 20, which was exactly the day with the lowest share prices in Germany in the year 2001. Based on the answers to questions concerning stock market predictions, we find that return forecasts of the investors in our sample are significantly higher after September 11, suggesting a belief in mean reversion. Our results show that investors interpret the largedrop in share prices during the ten day period after September 11 mainly as temporary rather than permanent. After the terror attacks, volatility forecasts are higher than before September 11. In two out of four cases, historical volatilities are overestimated. Therefore, investors are not generally overconfident in the way that they underestimate the variance of stock returns. Differences of opinion with regard to return forecasts are lower after the terror attacks whereas differences of opinion concerning volatility forecasts are mainly unaffected.

Abstract:
This study uses data that offers the unique opportunity to analyze how an unprecedented crisis such as the September 11 tragedy influences expected returns and volatility forecasts of individual investors. Via e-mail, we asked a randomly selected group of individual investors with accounts at a German online broker to answer an internet questionnaire at the beginning of August 2001. A second e-mail to the investors who had not yet answered, scheduled five weeks later, was postponed due to the terror attacks until September 20, which was exactly the day with the lowest share prices in Germany in the year 2001. Based on the answers to questions concerning stock market predictions, we find that return forecasts of the investors in our sample are significantly higher after September 11, suggesting a belief in mean reversion. Our results show that investors interpret the large drop in share prices during the ten day period after September 11 mainly as temporary rather than permanent. After the terror attacks, volatility forecasts are higher than before September 11. In two out of four cases, historical volatilities are overestimated. Therefore, investors are not generally overconfident in the way that they underestimate the variance of stock returns. Differences of opinion with regard to return forecasts are lower after the terror attacks whereas differences of opinion concerning volatility forecasts are mainly unaffected.

Return Expectations, Volatility Forecasts, Overconfidence, Differences of Opinion, Confidence Intervals, Forecasting, Individual Investors, September 11

Abstract:
The prediction of the recovery rate is gaining in importance especially regarding the Basel II-reform. The recovery rate is defined as the payback quota in case of default of the borrower. To investigate influencing factors on it, a data set containing 120 companies from one large German bank is analyzed. According to the literature, the impact of the quota of collateral and the company size can be confirmed. Moreover, important factors are analyzed that are not yet discussed in the literature as the intensity of the business connection and the creditworthiness of the borrower. The detected negative correlation between the probability of default and the recovery rate is important for the calculation of the interest rate and the results of credit risk models that commonly assume independence between these two factors.

Credit risk, recovery rates, bank loans

Abstract:
There are very few studies concerning the recovery rate of bank loans. Prediction models of recovery rates are increasing in importance because of the Basel II-framework, the impact on credit risk management, and the calculation of loan rates. In this study, we focus the analyses on the distribution of recovery rates and the impact of the quota of collateral, the creditworthiness of the borrower, the size of the company and the intensity of the client relationship on the recovery rate. According to our hypotheses a higher quota of collateral leads to a higher recovery rate, whereas the creditworthiness of the borrower and the size of the company is negatively related to the recovery rate. Borrowers with an intense client relationship with the bank exhibit a higher recovery rate.

Credit risk, Bank loans, Recovery rate

Abstract:
We investigate whether loan growth affects the riskiness of individual banks in 16 major countries. Using Bankscope data from more than 16,000 individual banks during 1997-2007, we test three hypotheses on the relation between abnormal loan growth and asset risk, bank profitability, and bank solvency. We find that loan growth leads to an increase in loan loss provisions during the subsequent three years, to a decrease in relative interest income, and to lower capital ratios. Further analyses show that loan growth also has a negative impact on the risk-adjusted interest income. These results suggest that loan growth represents an important driver of the riskiness of banks.

Bank lending, Credit risk, Loan losses, Bank profitability, Bank solvency

Abstract:
We use unique data to empirically analyse the behavior of senior managers in a distinct stock option plan. Combining individual-level exercise data with very detailed questionnaire data, we study how these managers exercise their stock options. Moreover, we investigate which rational and behavioral factors explain differences in the observed exercise behavior. We find that individuals exercise options very early and in a few large transactions. Risk aversion and holdings of company stock cannot explain the exercise behavior in our data. We provide interesting and new results that suggest that exercise decisions depend on the psychological factors miscalibration and mental accounting.

Employee Stock Options, Exercise Behavior, Stock Selling Behavior, Correlation of Economic

Abstract:
Portfolio choice and the implied asset pricing are usually derived assuming maximization of expected utility. In this Paper, they are derived from risk-value models that generalize the Markowitz-model. We use a behaviourally based risk measure with an endogenous or exogenous benchmark. If the risk measure is modelled by a negative HARA-function, then sharing rules are convex or concave relative to each other. A measure of heterogeneity of investors is derived. More heterogeneity (a) raises convexity/concavity of sharing rules and, thus, the need of investors to trade options, (b) increases convexity of the pricing kernel, (c) raises option prices relative to the price of the under-lying asset and (d) raises the variance and kurtosis of the risk-neutral probability distribution of the aggregate pay-off.

Heterogeneity of investors, asset pricing, decision-making under risk, convexity of pricing kernel

Abstract:
Portfolio choice and the implied asset pricing are usually derived assuming maximization of expected utility. In this paper, they are derived from risk-value models which generalize the Markowitz-model. We use a behaviorally based risk measure with an endogenous or exogenous benchmark. A richer set of sharing rules is obtained than in an expected utility world. If the risk measure is modelled by a negative HARA-function, then sharing rules are convex or concave relative to each other. The pricing kernel convexity increases with heterogeneity of investors making claims contingent on states of high and low aggregate payo more expensive. An increase in heterogeneity raises investors' needs for trading options and also makes all European options more expensive relative to the price of the underlying asset.

Decision Making Under Risk, Asset Pricing, Convexity of Pricing Kernel, Heterogeneity of Investors

Abstract:
We perform a market experiment to investigate how average transaction prices react to the arrival of new information. Following a positive shock in fundamental value, prices underreact strongly; following negative shocks we find evidence of a much less pronounced underreaction. After the shock, prices in both situations slowly drift towards the new fundamental value, leading to a characteristic momentum pattern. Controlling for investors' individual disposition effects we form high- and low-disposition markets and prove both underreaction and momentum to be stronger in the high-disposition group. While evidence is mainly in favor of underreaction models like Grinblatt and Han (2005), we conclude based on our findings that positive and negative shocks are not two sides of the same coin and encourage future studies to disentangle the asymmetry between the two situations more carefully.

momentum, disposition effect, market experiment

Abstract:
The disposition effect describes investors' common tendency of quitting a winning investment too soon and holding on to losing investments too long. Since Shefrin and Statman (1985), the two sides of the disposition effect, i.e. "selling winners" and "holding losers", have been assessed as one coherent bias. High-disposition investors are usually modeled to sell their winners quickly while almost never selling losers, while low-disposition investors are assumed to behave in the opposite way. Investigating both account level field data as well as data from a controlled laboratory experiment, we however show that individual investors' reactions towards "selling winners" and "holding losers" are completely independent, meaning that the disposition effect is better depicted as two separate biases, investors' "preference for cashing-in gains" and their "loss realization aversion". Furthermore, investors' individual preferences towards both sides are also stable over tasks and time so that both biases can be seen and modeled as individual per-sonality traits.

Decision analysis: Risk, Decision analysis: Sequential

Abstract:
We investigate the funding modes of German banks and the implications for lending and profitability during 1992-2002. We find that at many banks, deposits from customers decrease in relative terms while interbank liabilities increase as a source of funding. We cannot detect a negative impact of the relative decline in deposits on lending. The decreasing ability of banks to collect deposits and the substitution of deposits by interbank liabilities unfavorably affects the net interest result of banks that exhibit a deposit deficit, especially savings banks. Our findings indicate a creeping disintermediation, which leads to a lengthening of the intermediation chain.

Universal banking, Deposit taking, Interbank markets, Disintermediation

Abstract:
Reference-dependent preferences have been very well accepted in behavioral economics, behavioral finance and marketing. Still, we know very little about how decision makers form and update their reference points given a sequence of information. Our paper provides both a new theoretical framework and some novel experiments in a finance context to understand reference point formation over time. The theory is based on the information weighting function, which is a reinterpretation of the probability weighting function. We document our student subjects' reference points to be best described by the first and the last price of the time series, with intermediate prices receiving smaller weights. The data fits very well with the theoretical predictions.

Reference Point Formation. Reference-dependent preferences. Disposition effect.

Abstract:
This study evaluates the out-of-sample performance of numerous asset allocation strategies from the perspective of a Euro zone investor. Besides an increased sample period from January 1973 to December 2008, our contribution to the literature is twofold. First, we compare the performance of a broad spectrum of heuristic portfolio policies with a large set of well-established model extensions of the Markowitz (1952) mean-variance framework. Second, we explicitly differentiate between two prominent ways of diversification that are usually analyzed separately: international diversification in the stock market and diversification over different asset classes. Our analysis allows us to compare and discuss different diversification strategies to construct a "world market portfolio" that is as ex-ante efficient as possible. For international equity diversification, we find that none of the Markowitz-based portfolio models is able to significantly outperform simple heuristics. Among those, the GDP weighting dominates the traditional cap-weighted approach. In the asset allocation case, Markowitz models are again not able to beat a broad spectrum of fixed-weight alternatives out-of-sample. Analyzing more than 5000 heuristics, we find that in fact almost any form of well-balanced allocation over asset classes offers similar diversification gains as even very sophisticated and recently developed portfolio optimization approaches. Based on our findings, we suggest a simple and cost-efficient allocation approach for private investors.

portfolio theory, asset allocation, investment management, international diversification, heuristics, fundamental indexing

Abstract:
Many characteristics of tender offers have been discussed and analyzed in the literature as having significant effects on the tendering behavior of shareholders. In this analysis we focus on information easily accessible to outstanding shareholders, either given in the offer document or in stock prices. We test the effects of these factors on a dataset comprising 105 tender offers in Germany realized between 2002 and 2005, regulated by the German Securities Acquisition and Takeover Act (WpÜG). Our main results can be summarized as follows. We find a significant positive relation between a high tendering rate and target managements' recommendations to tender. Furthermore, we find significant differences in the tendering behavior for the different offer types. Finally, our findings show a significant positive relation between the relative compensation (i.e. the compensation relative to the difference between the 52 week high and 52 week low) and the tendering behavior. The analysis shows that both offer characteristics, as well as behavioral characteristics, influence the tendering behavior of shareholders.

Tender offers, tendering behavior

Abstract:
We study the degree of individual and aggregate market overreaction in a dynamic experimental auction market. In 13 sessions with overall 101 students we find overreaction to new information both in stock price forecasts and transaction prices. Interestingly, market forces do not seem to help in lowering overreaction to new information in our setting. Moreover, we illustrate that subjects are not able to learn from their previous failures and thus do not correct their erroneous beliefs. Hence, overreaction in our setting remains on a stable level although subjects can at least in theory learn from other market participants or from outcome feedback. Lastly, we find first experimental evidence for a positive relation between differences of opinion and trading volume in a continuous auction market with several market participants.

overreaction, underreaction, market experiment, differences of opinion, trading volume

Abstract:
The better-than-average effect describes the tendency of people to perceive their skills and virtues as above average. We derive a new experimental paradigm to distinguish between two explanations for the effect: rational information processing and overconfidence. With this setup we then show that people hold beliefs about their skills and virtues in different domains that are inconsistent with rational information processing. Instead, their probability assessments to belong to certain quantiles of a distribution closely follow the classic appraisal of overconfidence. This result addresses recent methodology concerns that claimed overconfidence in better-than-average research might be merely apparent and not result of a psychological bias. Although these objections are theoretically valid, their practical consequences remain limited.

Overconfidence, Bayesian Updating, Beliefs, Better-than-average Effect, Information processing

Abstract:
We analyze two recently documented follow-on purchase and repurchase patterns experimentally: Individual investors' preference for purchasing additional shares of a stock that decreased rather than increased in value succeeding an initial purchase (pattern 1) and investors' tendency for purchasing stocks that they previously sold at a higher price (pattern 2). Similar to the field data study by Odean, Strahilevitz, and Barber (2004), subjects in our experiment are about 2.5 to 3 times as likely to purchase units of a single fictitious good if the price of the good declined following a purchase or sale in the previous period. As an assignment of choices clearly reduces the effect, we argue that investors are involved in counterfactual thinking: They refrain from purchasing additional shares or repurchasing shares at a higher price because doing so means admitting to their ex post wrong decision.

Repurchase, Counterfactual Thinking, Experiment

Abstract:
This Paper analyzes the empirical relationship between credit default swap, bond and stock markets during the period 2000-2002. Focusing on the intertemporal comovement, we examine weekly and daily lead-lag relationships in a vector autoregressive model and the adjustment between markets caused by cointegration. First, we find that stock returns lead CDS and bond spread changes. Second, CDS spread changes Granger cause bond spread changes for a higher number of firms than vice versa. Third, the CDS market is significantly more sensitive to the stock market than the bond market and the magnitude of this sensitivity increases when credit quality becomes worse. Finally, the CDS market plays a more important role for price discovery than the corporate bond market.

Credit risk, credit spreads, credit derivatives, lead-lag relationship

Abstract:
We use data from a repeated survey panel that was run with real online broker customers in September 2008, December 2008, and March 2009. In all three surveys subjects' risk attitudes, risk expectations, return expectations, and risk taking behavior, i.e. the proportion of wealth they are willing to invest into the stock market compared to a risk free asset, were elicited. Using this unique dataset we analyze whether risk taking, risk attitudes, and expectations change from one quarter to the other and whether the latter two have an impact on risk taking behavior. Our results indicate that risk taking behavior decreases substantially from September to December and from December to March. Similarly, risk expectations and return expectations also change substantially from one survey to the next one. In contrast, various measures of risk attitudes are fairly stable over the time periods. Interestingly, observed changes in risk taking behavior can primarily be attributed to changes in risk and return expectations but not to changes in past performance or changes in risk attitudes. Moreover, our findings are valuable for practitioners - who are urged by MiFID (2006) to elicit their customers' risk profiles and risk preferences - since we show that risk attitudes remain fairly stable and that changes in investment behavior can mainly be attributed to changes in expectations. Lastly, we illustrate that overconfidence seems to be a fairly stable construct between September and December and tends to decrease slightly from December to March.

overconfidence, risk attitude, risk perception, return perception, risk taking, extended domain specificity

Abstract:
To investigate the effect of time horizon on investment behavior, this paper reports the results of an experiment in which business graduate students provided certainty equivalents and judged various dimensions of the outcome distribution of simple gambles that were played either once or repeatedly for 5 or 50 times. Systematic mistakes in the ex-ante estimations of the distributions of outcomes after (independent) repeated plays were observed. Despite correctly realizing that outcome standard deviation increases with the number of plays, respondents showed evidence of Samuelson's (1963) fallacy of large numbers. Perceived risk judgments showed only low correlations with standard deviation estimates, but were instead related to the anticipated probability of a loss (which was overestimated), mean excess loss, and the coefficient of variation. Implications for future research and practical implications for financial advisors are discussed.

Abstract:
What determines how top managers value their executive stock options? We explore this question empirically by using a unique survey data set which combines subjective option valuation data with a wide set of individual-level variables. Inconsistent with the predictions of theory, individuals in our data set substantially overvalue the options they receive. Optimism and overconfidence miscalibration) measures are significantly related to option values, whilst measures of risk aversion show no relationship. When managers are very optimistic about company stock they attribute higher values to their options. This finding is consistent with the implicit assumption in Malmendier and Tate (2005, 2007) and Malmendier et al. (2007). These papers assume that managers who overestimate future stock prices value their options higher and exercise at later points. We also find that less overconfident (miscalibrated) managers put higher values on their options.

Executive Stock Options, Subjective Option Values

Abstract:
We study the degree of overreaction and the relation of overreaction and psychological biases as well as financial consequences of overreaction in a controlled experimental setting with 104 participants.

The majority of participants tend to overreact, however, the degree of overreaction is heterogeneous. A few subjects even underreact. We also measure the overconfidence of the participants with a miscalibration scale. In line with theoretical predictions we find that more overconfident subjects overreact more. We also find that overreaction is associated with higher levels of risk taking after good signals and lower levels of risk taking after bad signals. Finally, overreaction harms portfolio efficiency, as measured by the Sharpe ratio.

overreaction, underreaction, overconfidence, portfolio performance, portfolio risk

Abstract:
This Paper analyses the response of stock and credit default swap (CDS) markets to rating announcements by the three major rating agencies during 2000-02. Applying event study methodology, we examine whether and how strongly these markets respond to rating announcements in terms of abnormal returns and adjusted CDS spread changes. First, we find that both markets not only anticipate rating downgrades but also reviews for downgrade by all three agencies. Second, a combined analysis of different rating events within and across agencies reveals that reviews for downgrade by Standard & Poor's and Moody's exhibit the largest impact on both markets. Third, the magnitude of abnormal performance in both markets is influenced by the level of the old rating, previous rating events and, only in the CDS market, by the pre-event average rating level by all agencies.

Credit ratings, credit default swaps, informational efficiency, event study

Abstract:
The savings banks' decision to distribute profits among their public owners is strongly regulated by law in order to guarantee their adequate funding via retained profits. However, the legal scope is reluctantly exhausted. In this study we examine the determinants of the savings banks' payout decision in more detail. We find that besides internal determinants also external factors regarding the savings bank's public owner have strong explanatory power. The better the financial situation of the public owner, the less likely is the savings bank to distribute profits and to increase payouts, respectively.

Savings banks, Germany, payout policy

Abstract:
An experiment examined how the type and presentation format of information about investment options affected investors' expectations about asset risk, returns, and volatility and how these expectations related to asset choice. Respondents were provided with the names of 16 domestic and foreign investment options, with 10-year historical return information for these options, or with both. Historical returns were presented either as a bar graph of returns per year or as a continuous density distribution. Provision of asset names allowed for the investigation of the mechanisms underlying the home bias in investment choice and other asset familiarity effects. Respondents provided their expectations of future returns, volatility, and expected risk, and indicated the options they would choose to invest in. Expected returns closely resembled historical expected values. Risk and volatility perceptions both varied significantly as a function of the type and format of information, but in different ways. Expected returns and perceived risk, not predicted volatility, predicted portfolio decisions.

Behavioral finance, home bias, portfolio decisions, risk perception, volatility forecasts

Abstract:
An experiment examined how the type and presentation format of information about investment options affected investors' expectations about asset risk, returns, and volatility and how these expectations related to asset choice. Respondents were provided with the names of 16 domestic and foreign investment options, with 10-year historical return information for these options, or with both. Historical returns were presented either as a bar graph of returns per year or as a continuous density distribution. Provision of asset names allowed for the investigation of the mechanisms underlying the home bias in investment choice and other asset familiarity effects. Respondents provided their expectations of future returns, volatility, and expected risk, and indicated the options they would choose to invest in. Expected returns closely resembled historical expected values. Risk and volatility perceptions both varied significantly as a function of the type and format of information, but in different ways. Expected returns and perceived risk, not predicted volatility, predicted portfolio decisions.

Abstract:
Already in the 1930s psychologists mentioned the tendency of people to see the self as the center of social judgment. This leads to egocentrically biased judgments when assessing others' behavior. Since the first demonstration of this social projection bias in a study by Ross, Greene, and House (1977) a lot of studies followed. They show the effect in different contexts and the false consensus effect became a widely accepted phenomenon.

In this paper we analyze the false consensus effect in a financial context. In two studies, we use simple lottery questions and ask subjects to state certainty equivalents for the own person and also to predict the average certainty equivalent of other participants. We find a strong correlation between the own judgment and the prediction of others' judgments. As we use 50/50-lotteries and in addition ambiguous probabilities in our studies, we extend the scope of Gilovich (1990) to financial decisions. The false consensus effect is stronger in situations with ambiguity. We also asked participants to give an interval for the certainty equivalents, i.e. a lower bound that they think is not fallen short by more than 5% of the participants and also an upper bound which is not exceeded by more than 5%. We find that people strongly underestimate the variation in others' risk preferences.

Risk Attitude, Ambiguity, False Consensus Effect, Prediction Error

Abstract:
For loss averse investors, a sequence of risky investments looks less attractive if it is evaluated myopically-an effect called myopic loss aversion (MLA). The consequences of this effect have been confirmed in several experimental studies and its robustness is largely undisputed. The effect’s causes, however, have not been thoroughly examined with regard to one important aspect. Due to the construction of the lotteries that were used in the experiments, none of the studies is able to distinguish between MLA and a much simpler explanation based on myopic loss probability aversion (MLPA). This distinction is important, however, in discussion of the practical relevance and the generalizability of the phenomenon. We designed an experimental study that is able to disentangle lottery attractiveness and loss probabilities. Our analysis reveals that mere loss probabilities are not as important in this dynamic context as previous findings in other domains suggest. The results favor the MLA over the MLPA explanation.

myopic loss aversion, Prospect Theory, repeated investing, experimental economics

Abstract:
This Paper reports the results of an experimental parameter-free elicitation and decomposition of decision weights under uncertainty. Assuming cumulative prospect theory, utility functions were elicited for gains and losses at an individual level using the trade-off method. Then decision weights were elicited using certainty equivalents of uncertain two-outcome prospects. Furthermore, decision weights were decomposed using observable choice instead of invoking other empirical primitives as in the previous experimental studies. The choice-based elicitation of decision weights allows for a quantitative study of their characteristics, and also allows, among other things, to confront the sign-dependence hypothesis with observed choice under uncertainty. Our results confirm concavity of the utility function in the gain domain and bounded sub-additivity of decision weights as well as choice-based subjective probabilities. We also find evidence of sign-dependence of decision weights.

Decision under uncertainty (ambiguity), choquet expected utility, cumulative prospect theory, decision weights, subjective probabilities, probability weighting

Abstract:
Internal credit ratings are expected to gain in importance because of their potential use for determining regulatory capital adequacy and banks' increasing focus on the risk-return profile in commercial lending. Therefore, the components of internal credit ratings merit not only a qualitative but also a quantitative analysis. Whereas the eligibility of financial factors as inputs for credit ratings is widely accepted, the role of non-financial factors remains ambiguous. Analysing credit file data from four major German banks we find evidence that the combined use of financial and non-financial factors leads to a more accurate prediction of current and future default events than the single use of each of these factors respectively.

Credit risk, credit ratings, debt default, probit analysis

Abstract:
The feedback frequency and the length of commitment are two important features of investment alternatives in intertemporal decision-making. So far, empirical research has shown that a lower feedback frequency combined with a longer binding period decreases myopia and thereby increases the willingness to invest into a risky asset. Almost nothing is known, however, about the isolated effect of each variable and about a possible interaction of these variables. In an experimental study, we disentangle the intertwined manipulation of feedback frequency and binding period, commonly used in previous research, to analyse how both variables alone contribute to the change in myopia. We find a strong effect depending on the length of commitment, a much less pronounced effect of feedback and a strong interaction between both variables. The results have important implications for real world intertemporal decision-making.

Keywords: Intertemporal decision-making, myopic loss aversion, feedback frequency, length of commitment, evaluation period

Intertemporal decision-making, myopic loss aversion, feedback frequency, length of commitment, evaluation period

Abstract:
This paper examines funding modes of German banks and its implications for lending and profitability over the period 1992-2002. Analyzing individual bank data from the Deutsche Bundesbank, we first find that deposits from customers lose ground in relative terms while interbank liabilities increase as a source of funding. Second, we cannot detect a negative impact of the relative decline in deposits on the lending business. In contrast, loans to customers become even slightly more important. Third, the decreasing ability of banks to mobilize deposits from customers and the substitution of deposits by interbank liabilities unfavorably affects the net interest results of savings banks.

Banks, deposit taking, disintermediation, panel analysis

Abstract:
In economic models, it is usually assumed that agents aggregate their private information with all available public information correctly and completely. In this experiment, we identify subjects' updating procedures and analyse the consequences for the aggregation process. Decisions can be based on private information with known quality and on the observed decisions of other participants. In this setting with random ordering, information cascades are observable and agents' overconfidence has a positive effect on avoiding a non-revealing aggregation process. However, overconfidence reduces welfare in general.

Abstract:
We analyse the relationship between credit default swap (CDS), bond and stock markets during 2000–2002. Focusing on the intertemporal co-movement, we examine monthly, weekly and daily lead-lag relationships in a vector autoregressive model and the adjustment between markets caused by cointegration. First, we find that stock returns lead CDS and bond spread changes. Second, CDS spread changes Granger cause bond spread changes for a higher number of firms than vice versa. Third, the CDS market is more sensitive to the stock market than the bond market and the strength of the co-movement increases the lower the credit quality and the larger the bond issues. Finally, the CDS market contributes more to price discovery than the bond market and this effect is stronger for US than for European firms.

Abstract:
Empirical research has demonstrated that a lower feedback frequency combined with a longer period of commitment decreases myopia and thereby increases the willingness to invest in a risky asset. In an experimental study, we disentangle the intertwined manipulation of feedback frequency and commitment to analyze how each individual variable contributes to the change in myopia and how they interact. We find that the period of commitment exerts a substantial impact and the feedback frequency a far less pronounced impact. There is a strong interaction between both variables. The results have significant implications for real world intertemporal decision making.

Intertemporal decision making; Myopic loss aversion; Feedback frequency; Length of commitment; Evaluation period

Abstract:
Once they have observed information, hindsight biased agents fail to remember how ignorant they were initially, they knew it all along. We formulate a theoretical model of this bias, providing a foundation for empirical measures, and implying that hindsight biased agents learning about volatility will underestimate it. In an experiment involving 67 students from Mannheim University, we find that hindsight bias reduces volatility estimates. In another experiment, involving 85 investment bankers in London and Frankfurt, we find that more biased agents have lower performance. These findings are robust to differences in location, information, overconfidence and experience.

Abstract:
Recently, researchers have gone a step further from just documenting biases of individual investors. More and more studies analyze how experience affects decisions and whether biases are eliminated by trading experience and learning. A necessary condition to learn is that investors actually know what happened in the past and that the views of the past are not biased. We contribute to the above mentioned literature by showing why learning and experience go hand in hand. Inexperienced investors are not able to give a reasonable self-assessment of their own past realized stock portfolio performance which impedes investors' learning ability. Based on the answers of 215 online broker investors to an Internet questionnaire, we analyze whether investors are able to correctly estimate their own realized stock portfolio performance. We show that investors are hardly able to give a correct estimate of their own past realized stock portfolio performance and that experienced investors are better able to do so. In general, we can conclude that we find evidence that investor experience lessens the simple mathematical error of estimating portfolio returns, but seems not to influence their 'behavioral' mistakes pertaining to how good (in absolute sense or relative to other investors) they are.

Return estimation, Portfolio return, Perceived returns, Self-assessment, Better than average effect, Overconfidence, Financial education, Financial literacy, Learning, Experience

Abstract:
Behavioral finance as a subdiscipline of behavioral economics is finance incorporating findings from psychology and sociology into its theories. Behavioral finance models are usually developed to explain investor behavior or market anomalies when rational models provide no sufficient explanations. To understand the research agenda, methodology, and contributions, this survey reviews traditional finance theory first. Then, this survey shows how modifications (e.g. incorporating market frictions) can rationally explain observed individual or market behavior. In the second section, the survey will explain the behavioral finance research methodology - how biases are modeled, incorporated into traditional finance theories, and tested empirically and experimentally- using one specific subset of the behavioral finance literature, the overconfidence literature.

Behavioral Finance, Overconfidence, Investor Behavior

Abstract:
This paper describes a study, in which we examine the diversification behavior of financial advisors. Learning from BENARTZI and THALER (2000) about investors' naive diversification strategies, we find evidence that the advisor's asset allocation can be described by a new behavioral portfolio model. To verify these findings we distributed questionnaires among several investment consultants who gave us information about their market expectations and three asset allocation recommendations. Their recommendations indeed seem to be described by the behavioral portfolio model. Finally, we examine losses of efficiency for their recommendations.

Abstract:
The results of an asset market experiment, in which 64 subjects trade two assets on eight markets in a computerized continuous double auction, indicate that (i) objectively irrelevant information influences trading behavior. Moreover, positively and negatively framed information leads to a particular trading pattern. However (ii), a probability variation of the framed information has no influence on trading volume. In addition, the results (iii) confirm the disposition effect. Participants who experience a gain sell their assets more rapidly than participants who experience a loss, and positively framed subjects generally sell their assets later than negatively framed subjects.

Financial markets, Prospect theory, Anchoring and adjustment, Experimental economics, Disposition effect

Abstract:
Framing effects are well known in individual decision making. Using experimental markets we investigated whether similar effects could be found in a market environment. Two series of experiments showed that negative framing can give different market prices than a positively framed endowment. We also found that volume may be affected by the framing of the endowment.

Experimental Markets; Endowment Effect; Framing Effect