Does good advice come cheap? - On the assessment of risk preferences in the lab and the field

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Advice is important for decision making, especially in the financial sector. We investigate how individuals assess risk preferences of others given sociodemographic information or pictures. Both non-professionals and fi nancial professionals participate in this artefactual field experiment. Subjects mainly rely on the other's self-assessment of risk preferences and on gender when forming the belief about someone else's risk preferences. On average, subjects consider themselves to be more risk-tolerant than the person they evaluate. Subjects use their own risk attitude as a reference point for predicting others' risk preferences. This false consensus eff ect is less pronounced for young professionals than for senior and non-professionals. Furthermore, financial professionals predict risk preferences more accurately compared to non-professionals.

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• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Discussion Paper Series ; No. 534

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual
• Subject: Risk Preferences ; Financial Advice ; Artefactual Field Experiment ; Behavioral Finance ; Risikopräferenz ; Finanzanalyse ; Anlageverhalten ; Sozialer Status ; Feldforschung

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Leuermann, Andrea ; Roth, Benjamin
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics
• (where): Heidelberg
• (when): 2012

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.11588/heidok.00013631
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/127351
• URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-opus-136310