IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bir/birmec/26-02.html

Luck in the Marketplace: Auspicious Timing and Financial Decision-Making

Author

Listed:
  • Ge Gao

    (Beijing Sport University)

  • Carlo Perroni

    (University of Warwick)

  • Oleksandr Talavera

    (University of Birmingham)

  • Linh Vi

    (Aston University)

Abstract

We study the role of superstition in China's peer-to-peer lending market by examining whether lenders time their bids according to ''lucky hours'' from the Chinese farmer's calendar. Loans funded during lucky hours perform better - but only because the platform lists higher-rated loans at those times. This pattern is consistent with a screening mechanism: highly risk-averse lenders place greater value on both true risk reductions and auspicious-day signals, so the platform maximizes surplus by bundling the two—listing low-risk loans on auspicious days. Moreover, listing safer loans at lucky hours can further boost profits because biased beliefs decay more slowly under asymmetric (bad-news-heavy) learning.

Suggested Citation

  • Ge Gao & Carlo Perroni & Oleksandr Talavera & Linh Vi, 2026. "Luck in the Marketplace: Auspicious Timing and Financial Decision-Making," Discussion Papers 26-02, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    • Handle: RePEc:bir:birmec:26-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.cal.bham.ac.uk/pdf/26-02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G41 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making in Financial Markets
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bir:birmec:26-02. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oleksandr Talavera (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/debhauk.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.