IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/15947.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inflation and Individual Investors’ Behavior: Evidence from the German Hyperinflation

Author

Listed:
  • Braggion, Fabio
  • von Meyerinck, Felix
  • Schaub, Nic

Abstract

We analyze how individual investors respond to inflation. We introduce a unique dataset containing information on local inflation and security portfolios of more than 2,000 clients of a German bank between 1920 and 1924, covering the German hyperinflation. We find that individual investors buy fewer (sell more) stocks when facing higher local inflation. This effect is more pronounced for less sophisticated investors. Moreover, we document a positive relation between local inflation and forgone returns following stock sales. Our findings are consistent with individual investors suffering from money illusion. Alternative explanations, such as consumption needs, are unlikely to drive our results.

Suggested Citation

  • Braggion, Fabio & von Meyerinck, Felix & Schaub, Nic, 2021. "Inflation and Individual Investors’ Behavior: Evidence from the German Hyperinflation," CEPR Discussion Papers 15947, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15947
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP15947
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brad M. Barber & Terrance Odean, 2008. "All That Glitters: The Effect of Attention and News on the Buying Behavior of Individual and Institutional Investors," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(2), pages 785-818, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christiane Goodfellow & Dirk Schiereck & Steffen Wippler, 2013. "Are behavioural finance equity funds a superior investment? A note on fund performance and market efficiency," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 14(2), pages 111-119, April.
    2. Timo Korkeamaki & Danielle Xu, 2015. "Institutional Investors and Foreign Exchange Risk," Quarterly Journal of Finance (QJF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 5(03), pages 1-33, September.
    3. Tommaso Colussi & Ingo E. Isphording & Nico Pestel, 2021. "Minority Salience and Political Extremism," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 237-271, July.
    4. Constantinos Antoniou & John A. Doukas & Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 2016. "Investor Sentiment, Beta, and the Cost of Equity Capital," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(2), pages 347-367, February.
    5. David E. Allen & Michael McAleer & Abhay K. Singh, 2019. "Daily market news sentiment and stock prices," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(30), pages 3212-3235, June.
    6. Prashant Das & Alan Ziobrowski, 2015. "The Relationship between Indian Realty Stocks and Online Searches," Journal of Emerging Market Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research, vol. 14(1), pages 1-19, April.
    7. Turan G. Bali & Robert F. Engle & Yi Tang, 2017. "Dynamic Conditional Beta Is Alive and Well in the Cross Section of Daily Stock Returns," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3760-3779, November.
    8. Chan, Kalok & Covrig, Vicentiu, 2012. "What determines mutual fund trading in foreign stocks?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 793-817.
    9. Chang, Xiaochen & Guo, Songlin & Huang, Junkai, 2022. "Kidnapped mutual funds: Irrational preference of naive investors and fund incentive distortion," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    10. Ioannis Oikonomou & Chao Yin & Lei Zhao, 2020. "Investment horizon and corporate social performance: the virtuous circle of long-term institutional ownership and responsible firm conduct," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1), pages 14-40, January.
    11. Umar, Tarik, 2022. "Complexity aversion when SeekingAlpha," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2).
    12. Thomas Gilbert & Shimon Kogan & Lars Lochstoer & Ataman Ozyildirim, 2012. "Investor Inattention and the Market Impact of Summary Statistics," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(2), pages 336-350, February.
    13. Femg, Xunan & Johansson, Anders C., 2019. "News or Noise? The Information Content of Social Media in China," Stockholm School of Economics Asia Working Paper Series 2019-52, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm China Economic Research Institute.
    14. Ishani Chaudhuri & Parthajit Kayal, 2022. "Predicting Power of Ticker Search Volume in Indian Stock Market," Working Papers 2022-214, Madras School of Economics,Chennai,India.
    15. Brown, Stephen & Hillegeist, Stephen A. & Lo, Kin, 2009. "The effect of earnings surprises on information asymmetry," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 208-225, June.
    16. Sheridan Titman & Chishen Wei. Wei & Bin Zhao, 2021. "Corporate Actions and the Manipulation of Retail Investors in China: An Analysis of Stock Splits," NBER Working Papers 29212, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Miletkov, Mihail K. & Poulsen, Annette B. & Babajide Wintoki, M., 2014. "The role of corporate board structure in attracting foreign investors," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 143-157.
    18. Mohrschladt, Hannes, 2021. "The ordering of historical returns and the cross-section of subsequent returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    19. Silvia Jordan & Corinna Treisch, 2010. "The perception of tax concessions in retirement savings decisions," Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 2(3), pages 157-184, October.
    20. Liu, Ya-Fei & Li, Hui & Liang, Sai, 2022. "Any reputation is a good reputation: influence of investor-perceived reputation in restructuring on hospitality firm performance," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    inflation; Investor behavior; Money illusion; Individual investors; Behavioral biases;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G41 - Financial Economics - - Behavioral Finance - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making in Financial Markets
    • N14 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: 1913-

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cpr:ceprdp:15947. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.