While there is a broad consensus in the literature that stock ownership is associated with individual characteristics, such as wealth, income, risk preferences, and financial literacy, less is known about the dynamics of stock market participation (SMP). Major fluctuations in SMP are oftentimes related to political events, economic shocks, and technological disruptions. We discuss the literature that ...
We examine the additivity of stock-market expectations over different time intervals. When asked about a ten-year interval, survey respondents expect a stock-price change that is not equal to, but closer to zero than, the sum of their expectations over two shorter time intervals that cover the same ten years. Such sub-additivity is irrational in that it cannot stem from aggregating short-term expectations. ...
This paper exploits unique variation induced by two information treatments on a sample of German households in 2017 and 2018 to evaluate how subjective belief formation about stock market returns affects stock market participation and portfolio choice. I find that on average the information treatments do not shift individual expectations about returns significantly. Additionally, I show that...
This paper investigates the effect of insolvency regulation reforms on cross-border debt and equity investments at aggregate and sectoral levels. Using disaggregated data from the ECB’s Securities Holdings Statistics by Sector (SHSS) database and the OECD indicators on efficiency of insolvency regulations, we find that investors increase their debt and equity holdings in the countries that undertook ...
The 3rd annual Workshop for Women in Macroeconomics, Finance and Economic History is being organized by the German Institute for Economic Research. The aim is to bring together female academic researchers and practitioners to promote and exchange ideas in the fields of Macroeconomics, Finance, and Economic History.
The debate about making investments and the financial sector more sustainable often focuses on a narrow distinction between "green" and "brown" assets that does not match the situation in the real economy, writes Franziska Schütze from the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). The sustainable finance expert says journalists need to read between the lines and make the many colours visible to ...
This paper studies external sovereign bonds as an asset class. It compiles a new database of 266,000 monthly prices of foreign-currency government bonds traded in London and New York between 1815 (the Battle of Waterloo) and 2016, covering up to 91 countries. The main insight is that, as in equity markets, the returns on external sovereign bonds have been sufficiently high to compensate for risk. Real ...