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Fear of the Unknown: Familiarity and Economic Decisions

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Author Info
Cao , Henry
Han, Bing
Hirshleifer, David
Zhang, Harold

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Abstract

Evidence indicates that people fear change and the unknown. We offer a model of familiarity bias in which individuals focus on adverse scenarios in evaluating defections from the status quo. The model explains the endowment effect, portfolio underdiversification, home and local biases. Equilibrium stock prices reflect an unfamiliarity premium. In an international setting, our model implies that the absolute pricing error of the standard CAPM is positively correlated with the amount of home bias. It also predicts that a modified CAPM holds wherein the market portfolio is replaced with a portfolio of the stock holdings of investors not subject to familiarity bias.

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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 6512.

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Date of creation: 2007
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Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:6512

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing
G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
F30 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - General
G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets

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Cited by:
(explanations, 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.)

  1. Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2008. "Thought and Behavior Contagion in Capital Markets," MPRA Paper 9164, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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