The Market for Financial Advice: An Audit Study

Sendhil Mullainathan, Markus Noeth and Antoinette Schoar

No 17929, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Do financial advisers undo or reinforce the behavioral biases and misconceptions of their clients? We use an audit methodology where trained auditors meet with financial advisers and present different types of portfolios. These portfolios reflect either biases that are in line with the financial interests of the advisers (e.g., returns-chasing portfolio) or run counter to their interests (e.g., a portfolio with company stock or very low-fee index funds). We document that advisers fail to de-bias their clients and often reinforce biases that are in their interests. Advisers encourage returns-chasing behavior and push for actively managed funds that have higher fees, even if the client starts with a well-diversified, low-fee portfolio.

JEL-codes: G02 G1 G11 G2 G23 G24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-03
Note: AP CF
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (206)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17929.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17929

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17929

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().