IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/iwhdps/iwh-10-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of Risk Attitudes on Financial Investments

Author

Listed:
  • Hyll, Walter
  • Irrek, Maike

Abstract

Several scholars analyze the relationship between individuals' willingness to take risks and financial investment decisions. We add to this literature in using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel which allow ruling out that investments in risky assets itself impact on risk attitudes. We show that individuals with a higher willingness to take risks are more likely to hold bonds, stocks, and company assets. When grouping individuals into risk groups, our results reveal that high risk takers are also less likely to own a life insurance. If endogenous adaption of risk attitudes from holding assets in previous years is not taken into account, the impact of risk attitudes on holding risky assets is upward biased.

Suggested Citation

  • Hyll, Walter & Irrek, Maike, 2015. "The Impact of Risk Attitudes on Financial Investments," IWH Discussion Papers 10/2015, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:iwhdps:iwh-10-15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/117340/1/834458446.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barasinska, Nataliya & Schäfer, Dorothea & Stephan, Andreas, 2012. "Individual Risk Attitudes and the Composition of Financial Portfolios: Evidence from German Household Portfolios," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 52(1), pages 1-14.
    2. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2011. "Individual Risk Attitudes: Measurement, Determinants, And Behavioral Consequences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 522-550, June.
    3. Alessandro Bucciol & Raffaele Miniaci, 2011. "Household Portfolios and Implicit Risk Preference," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(4), pages 1235-1250, November.
    4. Ulrike Malmendier & Stefan Nagel, 2011. "Depression Babies: Do Macroeconomic Experiences Affect Risk Taking?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 373-416.
    5. Westhead, Paul & Wright, Mike, 1998. "Novice, portfolio, and serial founders: are they different?," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 173-204, May.
    6. Kimball, Miles S & Sahm, Claudia R & Shapiro, Matthew D, 2008. "Imputing Risk Tolerance From Survey Responses," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 103(483), pages 1028-1038.
    7. Deniz Ucbasaran & Paul Westhead & Mike Wright, 2008. "Opportunity Identification and Pursuit: Does an Entrepreneur’s Human Capital Matter?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 153-173, February.
    8. Kapteyn, Arie & Teppa, Federica, 2011. "Subjective measures of risk aversion, fixed costs, and portfolio choice," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 564-580, August.
    9. Samuel Bowles, 1998. "Endogenous Preferences: The Cultural Consequences of Markets and Other Economic Institutions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 75-111, March.
    10. Robert B. Barsky & F. Thomas Juster & Miles S. Kimball & Matthew D. Shapiro, 1997. "Preference Parameters and Behavioral Heterogeneity: An Experimental Approach in the Health and Retirement Study," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 537-579.
    11. Steffen Andersen & Glenn W. Harrison & Morten I. Lau & E. Elisabet Rutström, 2008. "Lost In State Space: Are Preferences Stable?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 49(3), pages 1091-1112, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anna Blajer-Gołębiewska, 2021. "Individual corporate reputation and perception of collective corporate reputation regarding stock market investments," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(9), pages 1-21, September.

    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. Mattias Brachert & Walter Hyll, 2014. "On the Stability of Preferences: Repercussions of Entrepreneurship on Risk Attitudes," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 667, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    2. Fred Schroyen & Karl Ove Aarbu, 2018. "Attitudes Towards Large Income Risk in Welfare States: An International Comparison," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 85(340), pages 846-872, October.
    3. Mark Browne & Verena Jaeger & Petra Steinorth, 2019. "The impact of economic conditions on individual and managerial risk taking," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 44(1), pages 27-53, March.
    4. Jonathan P. Beauchamp & David Cesarini & Magnus Johannesson, 2017. "The psychometric and empirical properties of measures of risk preferences," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 54(3), pages 203-237, June.
    5. Mark Browne & Verena Jaeger & Petra Steinorth, 2019. "The impact of economic conditions on individual and managerial risk taking," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance Theory, Springer;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 44(1), pages 27-53, March.
    6. Cardak, Buly A. & Martin, Vance L., 2023. "Household willingness to take financial risk: Stockmarket movements and life‐cycle effects," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    7. John Ameriks & Gábor Kézdi & Minjoon Lee & Matthew D. Shapiro, 2020. "Heterogeneity in Expectations, Risk Tolerance, and Household Stock Shares: The Attenuation Puzzle," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(3), pages 633-646, July.
    8. Gürdal, Mehmet Y. & Kuzubaş, Tolga U. & Saltoğlu, Burak, 2017. "Measures of individual risk attitudes and portfolio choice: Evidence from pension participants," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 186-203.
    9. Decker, Simon & Schmitz, Hendrik, 2016. "Health shocks and risk aversion," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 156-170.
    10. Seeun Jung & Carole Treibich, 2014. "Is Self-Reported Risk Aversion Time Varying?," Working Papers halshs-00965549, HAL.
    11. Hvide, Hans K. & Panos, Georgios A., 2014. "Risk tolerance and entrepreneurship," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(1), pages 200-223.
    12. Menkhoff, Lukas & Sakha, Sahra, 2017. "Estimating risky behavior with multiple-item risk measures," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 59-86.
    13. Seeun Jung & Carole Treibich, 2015. "Is Self-Reported Risk Aversion Time Variant?," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 125(4), pages 547-570.
    14. Bucciol, Alessandro & Miniaci, Raffaele & Pastorello, Sergio, 2017. "Return expectations and risk aversion heterogeneity in household portfolios," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 201-219.
    15. Mika Akesaka & Peter Eibich & Chie Hanaoka & Hitoshi Shigeoka, 2023. "Temporal Instability of Risk Preference among the Poor: Evidence from Payday Cycles," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 68-99, October.
    16. Katerina Straznicka, 2012. "Temporal stability of risk preference measures," Working Papers halshs-00768437, HAL.
    17. Menkhoff, Lukas & Sakha, Sahra, 2014. "Multiple-item risk measures," Kiel Working Papers 1980, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    18. Insoo Cho & Peter F. Orazem & Tanya Rosenblat, 2018. "Are Risk Attitudes Fixed Factors or Fleeting Feelings?," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 127-149, June.
    19. Tausch, Franziska & Zumbuehl, Maria, 2018. "Stability of risk attitudes and media coverage of economic news," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 295-310.
    20. Chuang, Yating & Schechter, Laura, 2015. "Stability of experimental and survey measures of risk, time, and social preferences: A review and some new results," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 151-170.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    risk attitudes; financial investment; portfolio choice; reverse causality; German Socio-Economic Panel;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

    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:iwhdps:iwh-10-15. 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/iwhhhde.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.