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  • June 2017
  • Article
  • Review of Financial Studies

Does Aggregated Returns Disclosure Increase Portfolio Risk Taking?

By: John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson and Brigitte C. Madrian
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Abstract

Many experiments have found that participants take more investment risk if they see returns less frequently, see portfolio-level returns (rather than each individual asset’s returns), or see long-horizon (rather than one-year) historical return distributions. In contrast, we find that such information aggregation treatments do not affect total equity investment when we make the investment environment more realistic than in prior experiments. Previously documented aggregation effects are not robust to changes in the risky asset’s return distribution or the introduction of a multi-day delay between portfolio choice and return realizations.

Keywords

Information; Investment Portfolio; Investment Return

Citation

Beshears, John, James J. Choi, David Laibson, and Brigitte C. Madrian. "Does Aggregated Returns Disclosure Increase Portfolio Risk Taking?" Review of Financial Studies 30, no. 6 (June 2017): 1971–2005.
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About The Author

John Beshears

Negotiation, Organizations & Markets
→More Publications

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    • 2023
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More from the Authors
  • A Randomized Trial of Behavioral Nudges Delivered through Text Messages to Increase Influenza Vaccination among Patients with an Upcoming Primary Care Visit By: Mitesh S. Patel, Katherine L. Milkman, Linnea Gandhi, Heather N. Graci, Dena Gromet, Hung Ho, Joseph S. Kay, Timothy W. Lee, Jake Rothschild, Modupe Akinola, John Beshears, Jonathan E. Bogard, Alison Buttenheim, Christopher Chabris, Gretchen B. Chapman, James J. Choi, Hengchen Dai, Craig R. Fox, Amir Goren, Matthew D. Hilchey, Jillian Hmurovic, Leslie John, Dean Karlan, Melanie Kim, David Laibson, Cait Lamberton, Brigitte C. Madrian, Michelle N. Meyer, Maria Modanu, Jimin Nam, Todd Rogers, Renante Rondina, Silvia Saccardo, Maheen Shermohammed, Dilip Soman, Jehan Sparks, Caleb Warren, Megan Weber, Ron Berman, Chalanda N. Evans, Seung Hyeong Lee, Christopher K. Snider, Eli Tsukayama, Christophe Van den Bulte, Kevin G. Volpp and Angela L. Duckworth
  • Automating Short-Term Payroll Savings: Initial Evidence from a Large U.K. Experiment By: Sarah Holmes Berk, John Beshears, James J. Choi and David Laibson
  • How to Choose a Default By: John Beshears, Richard T. Mason and Shlomo Benartzi
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