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Investment and Concern for Relative Position

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Economists typically analyze individuals' market behavior in isolation from their nonmarket decisions. While this research strategy has generally been successful, it can lead to systematic errors when agents' nonmarket behavior affects their market choices. In this paper we analyze how individuals' investment behavior changes as a result of nonmarket behavior. Specifically, we analyze a model in which individuals must decide how to allocate their initial endowment between two random investments, where the returns are perfectly correlated across individuals for the first investment but independent across individuals for the second. We consider an environment in which men and women match, with wealthier individuals more successful in matching. We show how individuals' concern about relative wealth can affect their investment decisions, and we provide conditions under which individuals bias their investments either toward or away from the investment with correlated returns. A modification of the model is used to explain why agents investments might exhibit a home country bias.

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  • Harold L. Cole & George J. Mailath & Andrew Postlewaite, 2000. "Investment and Concern for Relative Position," CARESS Working Papres invest, University of Pennsylvania Center for Analytic Research and Economics in the Social Sciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:wop:pennca:invest
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    File URL: http://www.ssc.upenn.edu/~gmailath/wpapers/invest.pdf
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    Cited by:

    1. Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh & Laura Veldkamp, 2009. "Information Immobility and the Home Bias Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(3), pages 1187-1215, June.
    2. Michael Ostrovsky & Michael Schwarz, 2010. "Information Disclosure and Unraveling in Matching Markets," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 34-63, May.

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