The Effect of Prior Choices on Expectations and Subsequent Portfolio Decisions
53 Pages Posted: 16 May 2017
There are 2 versions of this paper
The Effect of Prior Choices on Expectations and Subsequent Portfolio Decisions
The Effect of Prior Choices on Expectations and Subsequent Portfolio Decisions
Date Written: May 15, 2017
Abstract
We document that prior portfolio choices influence investors' expectations about asset values, and their future choices. We find that people update more from information consistent with their prior choices, leading to sticky portfolios over time. These effects are related to how the brain's valuation centers encode new information about assets and about the trader's own success. These findings provide microfoundations for theoretical models where agents learn jointly about their skill and about asset values, leading to disagreement, and offer a common explanation for several puzzling investor behaviors, specifically, households' low stock market participation rate, and the disposition and repurchase effects.
Keywords: expectations, prior choices, neuroeconomics
JEL Classification: D03, D14, D83, D84, G02, G11
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation