Does Good Advice Come Cheap?: On the Assessment of Risk Preferences in the Lab and in the Field

Andrea Leuermann and Benjamin Roth

No 475, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: 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 financial 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 effect is less pronounced for young professionals than for senior and non-professionals. Furthermore, financial professionals predict risk preferences more accurately compared to non-professionals.

Keywords: Risk preferences; financial advice; artefactual field experiment; behavioral finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D81 G2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 p.
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp475

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