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Do women exhibit greater financial risk aversion than men? We answer this question using attitudinal and behavioral specifications of risk aversion drawn from the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). To approximate attitudinal specification of risk aversion, we use individuals’ self-reported financial risk tolerance. We use individuals’ relative risk aversion, that is, the effect of wealth on the proportion of assets categorized as risky as behavioral specification of risk aversion. We find that while women display greater attitudinal risk aversion, gender difference in behavioral risk aversion depends upon individuals’ marital status and role in household finances. Single women exhibit greater behavioral risk aversion compared to single men. However, this gender difference does not exist when we compare behavioral risk aversion of married women and men in charge of household finances.

While behavioral economic experiments have uncovered a wealth of insights concerning how people decide in the face of risk and uncertainty, the implications of these insights for the demand for agricultural insurance are under-explored. The purpose of this paper is to report on results from two recent field experiments that measure the extent to which farmer behavior departs from the predictions of expected utility theory and derives the implications of these departures for insurance demand.

Framed behavioral field experiments were played with random samples of West African Cotton farmers who lived in areas that were being incorporated into a cotton insurance pilot program.

Substantial numbers of farmers depart from expected utility behavior in ways that predict excess sensitivity to uncovered basis risk in insurance contracts; and, the fact that insurance premiums are typically framed as certain and unavoidable, while benefits are unknown and stochastic.

Using novel field experimental methods, the work summarized here indicates that more careful design of index insurance contracts in conformity with the findings of behavioral economics could result in larger contract uptake and, ultimately, larger development impacts.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the existence of behavioral biases, disposition effect and house money effect in investment decisions of defined benefit pension funds. It investigates the determinants of portfolios by examining whether pensions display risk seeking or risk aversion behavior in reaction to prior gains and losses.

The first research question is to examine the impact of prior period’s return and αs on existing portfolio allocation in equity, debt, real estate and other assets. In order to test this relationship, four separate regressions are estimated using the pooled data. Regression helps in examining the relationship between prior gains with current allocation in four categories of assets of varying degrees of riskiness (stocks, debt, real estate and other assets). In order to investigate the second research question on whether pension funds increase (decrease) their investments in risky (safer) assets due to prior gains and αs, the four variables representing the changes in portfolio allocation for each asset class over one period are employed. These changes in allocation are regressed against the prior year’s actual return, expected return, αs and a set of control variables.

The results suggest significant negative (positive) relationship between prior positive returns and αs with portfolio allocation in risky (safer) assets. Also, there is an increased (decreased) investment in safer (risky) assets following prior period’s positive returns and αs. The findings confirm the existence of disposition effect, while there is no evidence of house money effect.

The portfolio allocation of pension plans provides unique setting to investigate the relevance of behavioral finance and examine the role of psychological biases on risk taking. This study attempts to contribute to the literature by empirically investigating whether the tenets of behavioral finance are relevant in defined benefit pension fund’s portfolio allocation decisions. Specifically, it focuses on the determinants of portfolio choices by directly investigating pension funds’ reaction to prior period’s actual as well as risk adjusted return (or αs – the difference between the actual and expected return).

This paper aims to explore the relationship between prudence in risk attitudes and patience of time preference of Chinese apple growers regarding off-farm cold storage of production and marketing in non-harvest seasons. The authors also consider the effect of farmer participation in cooperative-like organizations known as Farm Bases (FBs).

The authors use multiple list methods and elicitation strategies to measure Chinese apple farmers' risk attitudes and time preferences. Because these farmers can either sell their apples immediately to supermarkets or intermediaries or place them in storage, the authors assess correlations between their storage decisions and their preferences regarding risk and time. The authors also differentiate risks involving gains and losses and empirically examine individual risk attitudes in different scenarios.

Marketing decisions are moderately associated with risk attitudes but not time preference. Farmers with memberships in local farmer cooperatives are likely to speculate more in cold storage. Thus, risk aversion behavioral and psychological motives affect farmers' decision-making of cold storage and intertemporal marketing activities. However, membership in cooperatives does not always result in improved income and welfare for farmers.

The research confirms that behavioral factors may strongly drive vulnerable smallholder farmers to speculate into storage even under seasonal and uncertain marketing volatility. There is the need to think deeper about the rationale of promoting cooperatives and other agricultural forms, because imposing these without careful consideration can have negative impacts.

Do risk and time preferences affect the decision of farmers to utilize storage facilities? This question is important because it is not clear if and how risk preferences affect the tradeoff between consuming today and saving for tomorrow, especially for farmers in developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively review a large and heterogeneous body of academic literature on investors' feedback trading, one of the most popular trading patterns observed historically in financial markets. Specifically, the authors aim to synthesize the diverse theoretical approaches to feedback trading in order to provide a detailed discussion of its various determinants, and to systematically review the empirical literature across various asset classes to gauge whether their feedback trading entails discernible patterns and the determinants that motivate them.

Given the high degree of heterogeneity of both theoretical and empirical approaches, the authors adopt a semi-systematic type of approach to review the feedback trading literature, inspired by the RAMESES protocol for meta-narrative reviews. The final sample consists of 243 papers covering diverse asset classes, investor types and geographies.

The authors find feedback trading to be very widely observed over time and across markets internationally. Institutional investors engage in feedback trading in a herd-like manner, and most noticeably in small domestic stocks and emerging markets. Regulatory changes and financial crises affect the intensity of their feedback trades. Retail investors are mostly contrarian and underperform their institutional counterparts, while the latter's trades can be often motivated by market sentiment.

The authors provide a detailed overview of various possible theoretical determinants, both behavioural and non-behavioural, of feedback trading, as well as a comprehensive overview and synthesis of the empirical literature. The authors also propose a series of possible directions for future research.

Storytelling through virtual reality (VR) combines the strengths of cutting-edge technology with traditional informational campaigns. As a tool for climate change mitigation, VR has been shown to educate individuals and stimulate both emotional and cognitive responses that promote pro-environmental behavior. This paper aims to investigate whether these benefits extend to the field of green investing through an experiment conducted with a sample of small business entrepreneurs.

The experimental design involved making choices between bonds varying in maturity dates, annual interest and environmental classification (regular versus green). To identify potential impacts of the immersive experience on investment decisions, these choices were made both before and after exposure to VR videos illustrating the devastating effects of climate change. A multiple price list was employed to elicit subjects' risk preferences, enabling the joint estimation of the treatment effect and the risk and time preference parameters.

The findings indicate that, when risk and time preference parameters are controlled for, a VR experience can nudge toward green investment choices. This effect is more profound among those who already exhibit a greater propensity to opt for green investments.

Previous research shows that negative emotions, such as guilt, affect pro-environmental intentions, as well as actions, while message vividness through immersive experiences is effective in nudging greener behavior. Since analogous results in the framework of financial investments are not currently available, this paper seeks to test whether VR videos depicting the adverse effects of climate change can generate negative emotions associated with experiencing these effects and make them salient in subsequent investment decisions made by small business entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between psychopathy and its underlying traits and financial risk and time preferences.

The authors measure risk and time preferences using both the cumulative prospect theory and quasi-hyperbolic time discounting in a sample of business majors. The Psychopathic Personality Inventory – Revised test is then used to measure the global psychopathy and eight primary and two secondary traits of the sample of business majors. The measures of psychopathy are used as explanatory variables to model variation in subjects’ time and risk preferences.

The authors find that the overall score on the continuum of psychopathy is positively related to the linearity of the cumulative prospective utility function. A breakdown of psychopathy into its secondary and primary traits shows a more complex relation. For example, the secondary trait of self-centered impulsivity is statistically significant in models of financial risk preference determinants under the cumulative prospect theory. The authors find that the primary traits of self-centered impulsivity and stress immunity are related to a higher time preference discount rate under quasi-hyperbolic time preferences.

This paper adds to the literature on personality and financial decisions and highlights the importance of psychopathy in finance.

This study aims to assess the risk profile of millennial investors residing in the Delhi NCR region. In addition, the relationship between the risk profile and demographic traits of millennial investors was also analyzed.

Data was collected using a structured questionnaire segregated into two sections. In the first section, millennials were asked questions on socio-demographic factors, and the second section contained ten Likert-type statements to cover the multidimensionality of financial risk. Factor analysis and one-way ANOVA were used to analyze the primary data collected for this study.

The findings indicate that the risk profile of millennials is mainly affected by three factors: risk-taking capacity, risk attitude and risk propensity. Except for educational qualification and occupation, all other demographic features, such as age, gender, marital status, income and family size, seem to significantly influence the factors defining millennials' risk profile.

Uncertainty is inherent in any financial decision, and an investor’s willingness to deal with these variations determines their investment risk profile. To make sound financial decisions, it is mandatory to understand one’s risk profile. The awareness of millennials' distinctive risk profile will come in handy to financial stakeholders because they account for one-third of India’s population, and their financial decisions will shape the financial world for the decades to come.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether negative incentives in the pay-for-performance mechanism would trigger loan officers to strategically reject potentially good loans. If so, what is the feasible solution to alleviate the problem.

A framed field experiment was conducted to test loan decision behaviors using loan officers from Rural Credit Cooperatives in Shandong, China. A 2 by 2 between-subject design was adopted to generate variation in incentives and prior information about credit risks.

Results showed that loan officers did ration credit by rejecting more loans when facing risks of personal income loss. However, providing risk information about the application pool boosted the approval rate and offset the behavioral responses by a roughly same magnitude.

Findings in this study suggest that certain institutional settings can result in credit rationing via strategic loan misclassification. Further, information sometimes generates similar effects as those costly incentives or mechanisms that are not implementable in practice.

This study adopted an innovative monetized experimental design that allows researchers to examine the (otherwise unobservable) trade-offs between Type I and Type II error in loan misclassification as incentives change. In addition, an anchoring prior information treatment is used to solicit the relative power of almost costless information and costly monetary incentives, and to point out a potentially feasible solution.