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Motives for Delegating Financial Decisions

Author

Listed:
  • Mikhail Freer
  • Daniel Friedman
  • Simon Weidenholzer

Abstract

Why do some investors delegate financial decisions to supposed experts? We report a laboratory experiment designed to disentangle four possible motives. Almost 600 investors drawn from the Prolific subject pool choose whether or not to delegate a real-stakes choice among lotteries to a previous investor (an ``expert'') after seeing information on the performance of several available experts. We find that a surprisingly large fraction of investors delegate even trivial choice tasks, suggesting a major role for the blame shifting motive. A larger fraction of investors delegate our more complex tasks, suggesting that decision costs play a role for some investors. Some investors who delegate choose a low quality expert with high earnings, suggesting a role for chasing past performance. We find no evidence for a fourth possible motive, that delegation makes risk more acceptable.

Suggested Citation

  • Mikhail Freer & Daniel Friedman & Simon Weidenholzer, 2023. "Motives for Delegating Financial Decisions," Papers 2309.03419, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2309.03419
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    References listed on IDEAS

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