IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/imfswp/305256.html

Do financial advisors have different beliefs than lay people?

Author

Listed:
  • Rumpf, Matthias
  • Haliassos, Michael
  • Kosyakova, Tetyana
  • Otter, Thomas

Abstract

We conduct a web-based experiment in which we elicit the recommendations of professional and lay advisors on the risky portfolio share of randomly assigned vignettes of investors. Both professionals and lay advisors respond to investor characteristics broadly in agreement with portfolio theory, but they are also influenced by their own characteristics and portfolios. Professionals tend to respond more than lay advisors to investor characteristics, but also to their own risk aversion and income. Allowing for unobserved heterogeneity and estimating the distribution of advice through Bayesian methods, we find that professionals tend to recommend more limited risk exposure to older college educated groups compared to their peers, while they recommend young, lower-educated individuals to include more stocks than what their peers and elders would recommend.

Suggested Citation

  • Rumpf, Matthias & Haliassos, Michael & Kosyakova, Tetyana & Otter, Thomas, 2024. "Do financial advisors have different beliefs than lay people?," IMFS Working Paper Series 212, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:imfswp:305256
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/305256/1/1906794588.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Antoinette Schoar & Yang Sun, 2024. "Financial Advice and Investor Beliefs: Experimental Evidence on Active vs. Passive Strategies," NBER Working Papers 33001, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Leonardo Bursztyn & Florian Ederer & Bruno Ferman & Noam Yuchtman, 2014. "Understanding Mechanisms Underlying Peer Effects: Evidence From a Field Experiment on Financial Decisions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(4), pages 1273-1301, July.
    3. Laurent E. Calvet & Paolo Sodini, 2014. "Twin Picks: Disentangling the Determinants of Risk-Taking in Household Portfolios," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(2), pages 867-906, April.
    4. Stephen Foerster & Juhani T. Linnainmaa & Brian T. Melzer & Alessandro Previtero, 2017. "Retail Financial Advice: Does One Size Fit All?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(4), pages 1441-1482, August.
    5. Duflo, Esther & Saez, Emmanuel, 2002. "Participation and investment decisions in a retirement plan: the influence of colleagues' choices," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 121-148, July.
    6. Jessica A. Wachter & Motohiro Yogo, 2010. "Why Do Household Portfolio Shares Rise in Wealth?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(11), pages 3929-3965, November.
    7. Nikolai Roussanov, 2010. "Diversification and Its Discontents: Idiosyncratic and Entrepreneurial Risk in the Quest for Social Status," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(5), pages 1755-1788, October.
    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. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    2. Duraj, Kamila & Grunow, Daniela & Chaliasos, Michael & Laudenbach, Christine & Siegel, Stephan, 2024. "Rethinking the stock market participation puzzle: A qualitative approach," IMFS Working Paper Series 210, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).
    3. Duraj, Kamila & Grunow, Daniela & Chaliasos, Michael & Laudenbach, Christine & Siegel, Stephan, 2024. "Rethinking the stock market participation puzzle: A qualitative approach," SAFE Working Paper Series 441, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    4. Kamila Duraj & Daniela Grunow & Michael Haliassos & Christine Laudenbach & Stephan Siegel, 2025. "Rethinking the Stock Market Participation Puzzle: A Qualitative Approach," CESifo Working Paper Series 11980, CESifo.
    5. John Y. Campbell, 2016. "Restoring Rational Choice: The Challenge of Consumer Financial Regulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 1-30, May.
    6. Kiichi Tokuoka, 2017. "Is stock investment contagious among siblings?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 1505-1528, June.
    7. Chenxu Li & Olivier Scaillet & Yiwen Shen, 2020. "Wealth Effect on Portfolio Allocation in Incomplete Markets," Papers 2004.10096, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2021.
    8. Chenxu Li & O. Scaillet & Yiwen Shen, 2020. "Decomposition of Optimal Dynamic Portfolio Choice with Wealth-Dependent Utilities in Incomplete Markets," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 20-22, Swiss Finance Institute.
    9. Yiwen Shen & Chenxu Li & Olivier Scaillet & Yueting Jiang, 2026. "Dynamic Portfolio Allocation Under Market Incompleteness and Wealth Effects," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 74(1), pages 93-117, January.
    10. Matthieu Gomez, 2017. "Asset Prices and Wealth Inequality," 2017 Meeting Papers 1155, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. Baghestanian, Sascha & Gortner, Paul J. & van der Weele, Joël J., 2015. "Peer effects and risk sharing in experimental asset markets," SAFE Working Paper Series 67, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, revised 2015.
    12. Zhang, Annie C. & Fang, Jiali & Jacobsen, Ben & Marshall, Ben R., 2018. "Peer effects, personal characteristics and asset allocation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 76-95.
    13. Bender, Svetlana & Choi, James J. & Dyson, Danielle & Robertson, Adriana Z., 2022. "Millionaires speak: What drives their personal investment decisions?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 305-330.
    14. Hellström, Jörgen & Stålnacke, Oscar & Olsson, Rickard, 2022. "Individuals’ financial risk-taking and peer influence," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 1-17.
    15. Kirchler, Michael & Lindner, Florian & Weitzel, Utz, 2020. "Delegated investment decisions and rankings," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    16. Amrei Lahno & Marta Serra-Garcia, 2015. "Peer effects in risk taking: Envy or conformity?," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 73-95, February.
    17. Robert Östling & Erik Lindqvist & David Cesarini & Joseph Briggs, 2016. "Wealth, Portfolio Allocations, and Risk Preference," 2016 Meeting Papers 1089, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. Michael Kirchler & Florian Lindner & Utz Weitzel, 2018. "Delegated Decision Making and Social Competition in the Finance Industry," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics 2018_08, Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics.
    19. Wen, Hong-xing & Wang, Chan & Nie, Pu-yan, 2021. "Acceleration of rural households’ conversion to cleaner cooking fuels: The importance and mechanisms of peer effects," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    20. Kraft, Holger & Meyer-Wehmann, André & Seifried, Frank Thomas, 2020. "Dynamic asset allocation with relative wealth concerns in incomplete markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).

    More about this item

    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:zbw:imfswp:305256. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/hoffmde.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.