Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Are Economists More Likely to Hold Stocks?

Contents:

Author Info

  • Charlotte Christiansen
  • Juanna Schröter Joensen
  • Jesper Rangvid

    () (School of Economics and Management, University of Aarhus, Denmark and CREATES)

Abstract

A large register-based panel data set containing detailed information on educational attainments as well as financial and socioeconomic variables for individual investors enables us to test the hypothesis that due to informational advantages economists are more likely to hold stocks than otherwise identical investors. Firstly, we consider the change in stockholdings associated with (i) completing an economics education and (ii) an economist moving into the household. Secondly, we model the stock market participation decision by a probit model with unobserved individual heterogeneity. This model allows us to control for both observable and unobservable investor characteristics. Thirdly, instrumental variables estimation allows us to identify the causal effect of an economics education on stock market participation for individuals who are induced to acquire an economics education due to a university opening. Throughout, we focus explicitly on the effect of a change in educational status on the likelihood of holding stocks. Our overall result is that economists have a significantly higher probability of participating in the stock market than investors with any other education. This result is shown to be highly robust. Finally, we find that economists hold more stocks value-wise than similar investors with other educational backgrounds.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: ftp://ftp.econ.au.dk/creates/rp/07/rp07_08.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by School of Economics and Management, University of Aarhus in its series CREATES Research Papers with number 2007-08.

as in new window
Length: 43
Date of creation: 15 May 2007
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:aah:create:2007-08

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.econ.au.dk/afn/

Related research

Keywords: Investor Education; Portfolio Choice; Stock Market Participation;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2004. "Perspectives on Behavioral Finance: Does "Irrationality" Disappear with Wealth? Evidence from Expectations and Actions," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2003, Volume 18, pages 139-208 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Christopher J. Malloy & Tobias J. Moskowitz & Annette Vissing-Jørgensen, 2009. "Long-Run Stockholder Consumption Risk and Asset Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(6), pages 2427-2479, December.
  3. Grinblatt, Mark & Keloharju, Matti, 2000. "The investment behavior and performance of various investor types: a study of Finland's unique data set," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 43-67, January.
  4. Mark C. Berger, 1988. "Predicted future earnings and choice of college major," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 41(3), pages 418-429, April.
  5. Willis, Robert J & Rosen, Sherwin, 1979. "Education and Self-Selection," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages S7-36, October.
  6. Carneiro, Pedro & Hansen, Karsten & Heckman, James, 2003. "Estimating distributions of treatment effects with an application to the returns to schooling and measurement of the effects of uncertainty on college choice," Working Paper Series 2003:9, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
  7. M. Fatih Guvenen, 2003. "A Parsimonious Macroeconomic Model for Asset Pricing: Habit Formation or Cross-sectional Heterogeneity?," RCER Working Papers 499, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
  8. Mundlak, Yair, 1978. "On the Pooling of Time Series and Cross Section Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 69-85, January.
  9. Esther Duflo & Emmanuel Saez, 2000. "Participation and Investment Decisions in a Retirement Plan: The Influence of Colleagues' Choices," NBER Working Papers 7735, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. Massimo Massa & Andrei Simonov, 2006. "Hedging, Familiarity and Portfolio Choice," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(2), pages 633-685.
  11. Basak, Suleyman & Cuoco, Domenico, 1998. "An Equilibrium Model with Restricted Stock Market Participation," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 11(2), pages 309-41.
  12. Heckman, James J, 1979. "Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(1), pages 153-61, January.
  13. Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli, 2005. "Awareness and Stock Market Participation," Review of Finance, Springer, vol. 9(4), pages 537-567, December.
  14. Laurent E. Calvet & John Y. Campbell & Paolo Sodini, 2006. "Down or Out: Assessing the Welfare Costs of Household Investment Mistakes," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 2107, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
  15. Joël Peress, 2004. "Wealth, Information Acquisition, and Portfolio Choice," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(3), pages 879-914.
  16. N. Gregory Mankiw & Stephen P. Zeldes, 1991. "The Consumption of Stockholders and Non-Stockholders," NBER Working Papers 3402, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  17. Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, 2002. "Towards an Explanation of Household Portfolio Choice Heterogeneity: Nonfinancial Income and Participation Cost Structures," NBER Working Papers 8884, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  18. Jonathan A. Parker, 2001. "The Consumption Risk of the Stock Market," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 32(2), pages 279-348.
  19. Luigi Guiso & Michael Haliassos & Tullio Jappelli, 2003. "Household stockholding in Europe: where do we stand and where do we go?," Economic Policy, CEPR & CES & MSH, vol. 18(36), pages 123-170, 04.
  20. Chamberlain, Gary, 1980. "Analysis of Covariance with Qualitative Data," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 225-38, January.
  21. Arcidiacono, Peter, 2002. "Ability Sorting and the Returns to College Major," Working Papers 02-26, Duke University, Department of Economics.
  22. Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, 2001. "The Human Capital of Stockholders and the International Diversification Puzzle," Working Papers 2001-12, Brown University, Department of Economics.
  23. Luis M. Viceira, 1999. "Optimal Portfolio Choice for Long-Horizon Investors with Nontradable Labor Income," NBER Working Papers 7409, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  24. Haliassos, Michael & Bertaut, Carol C, 1995. "Why Do So Few Hold Stocks?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(432), pages 1110-29, September.
  25. Joshua D. Coval & Tobias J. Moskowitz, 1999. "Home Bias at Home: Local Equity Preference in Domestic Portfolios," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 2045-2073, December.
  26. Fatih Guvenen & Burhanettin Kuruscu, 2006. "Does Market Incompleteness Matter for Asset Prices?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(2-3), pages 484-492, 04-05.
  27. Bernheim, B. Douglas & Garrett, Daniel M., 2003. "The effects of financial education in the workplace: evidence from a survey of households," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(7-8), pages 1487-1519, August.
  28. Heckman, James J. & Lalonde, Robert J. & Smith, Jeffrey A., 1999. "The economics and econometrics of active labor market programs," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 31, pages 1865-2097 Elsevier.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Hryshko, Dmytro & Luengo-Prado, Maria & Sorensen, Bent E, 2010. "The Effect of Education on Equity Holdings," CEPR Discussion Papers 7844, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  2. Guiso, Luigi & Sodini, Paolo, 2012. "Household Finance: An Emerging Field," CEPR Discussion Papers 8934, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  3. Jonathan Berk & Johan Walden, 2010. "Limited Capital Market Participation and Human Capital Risk," NBER Working Papers 15709, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Maarten van Rooij & Annamaria Lusardi & Rob Alessie, 2007. "Financial Literacy and Stock Market Participation," NBER Working Papers 13565, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Tabea Bucher-Koenen & Michael Ziegelmeyer, 2011. "Who lost the most? Financial Literacy, Cognitive Abilities, and the Financial Crisis," BCL working papers 54, Central Bank of Luxembourg.
  6. Christiansen, Charlotte & Joensen, Juanna Schroter & Nielsen, Helena Skyt, 2007. "The risk-return trade-off in human capital investment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(6), pages 971-986, December.
  7. Margarida Abreu & Victor Mendes, 2011. "Information, Overconfidence and Trading: Do the Sources of Information Matter?," Working Papers 2011/25, Department of Economics at the School of Economics and Management (ISEG), Technical University of Lisbon..
  8. Leora F. Klapper & Annamaria Lusardi & Georgios A. Panos, 2012. "Financial Literacy and the Financial Crisis," NBER Working Papers 17930, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  9. Berger, Allen N. & Kick, Thomas & Schaeck, Klaus, 2012. "Executive board composition and bank risk taking," Discussion Papers 03/2012, Deutsche Bundesbank, Research Centre.
  10. Kaustia, Markku & Torstila, Sami, 2011. "Stock market aversion? Political preferences and stock market participation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 98-112, April.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aah:create:2007-08

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.