The Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change was used to assess change in investing behavior among Investing For Your Future home-study course participants. The goal of Investing For Your Future is to help people improve their personal finance behaviors leading to financial security in later life. On average, after course participation fourteen of the fifteen investing behaviors were identified in the desired stages of established behavior. The study was based on Prochaska's Transtheoretical Model of Change (1979), including five different stages of behavior. This study investigated at what stage of change course participants are in for certain investing behaviors since completing Investing For Your Future (O'Neill et al., 2000). The stages of behavior are: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance. The desired stage was either the action or maintenance stage, which indicated that the investing behavior has been established. A person in the precontemplation stage is not thinking of future needs, not taking any actions to prepare for investing. Someone in the contemplation stage has set investing goals, but is not otherwise preparing to do the investing behavior. Someone in the preparation stage has both set goals and actively sought after information about the investing behavior. An individual in the action stage has not only done the preparatory actions, but has also engaged in the investing behavior. Finally, an individual in the maintenance stage has met the investing behavior action over an ongoing period of time. The quantitative survey design of this study was adapted from Dillman's Mail and Internet Surveys (2002). A survey questionnaire was created online using multiple choice and open-ended questions and was sent to the sample as a link in an email. The population consisted of Investing For Your Future (O'Neill et al., 2000) online course participants from April 1, 2001 through April 11, 2005. The initial sample consisted of 1,123, however at least 415 members of the sample never received the survey, reducing the sample to 708 people. Upon sending out the email, many error reports were received stating that the recipient did not receive the email. Response rates for the survey were very low, and can be attributed to multiple problems. / Master of Science

Background: The traditional neoclassical model of finance has assumed that all individuals act rationally and that they update their beliefs according to the information they have obtained to maximise their utility. This concept has been challenged by behavioural finance which has over the past decades become a new approach to better understand certain behaviours. Behavioural finance is a broad area which can be divided into different areas. One of them is investor behaviour, which will be the focus of this thesis. Research has shown that investors do not act rationally when deciding how much risk to take when considering an investment. Instead, it has been found that there are other factors that influence risk-taking in an investment, for instance gender, income, marital status and age. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to better understand if a selected group of demographic factors can affect the risk attitude investors in Sweden have with regard to their investments and to determine how well these factors explain the level of risk. The chosen demographic factors are gender, age, marital status and income. Method: This study is conducted using a deductive approach and employing a quantitative research method. A multinomial logistic regression was performed in the statistical program R. The data used is secondary data collected from financial counselling meetings of 111,265 clients during the period of 2018-01-03 to 2019-04-04. It is gathered from one of Sweden’s largest bank who measures customers’ risk tolerance by using a risk assessment tool that categorises risk tolerance into five levels where one is the lowest and five is the highest. Conclusion: Statistically significant results confirm that that the selected demographic factors have an effect on the risk level an investor takes. Males have higher risk tolerance than women, the older an individual is, the less risk the person wants to take, married people have higher risk tolerance than those that are not, and risk tolerance increases slightly with income.

L’equity crowdfunding (ECF) est un mode d’investissement récent, accessible au grand public, qui a pour caractéristiques de se dérouler en ligne, au sein d’une communauté virtuelle, dans l’environnement d’une plateforme intermédiaire.Ce travail doctoral a pour objectif de mieux comprendre le comportement des investisseurs particuliers qui achètent des produits financiers en ECF, les crowdinvestors.En s’inscrivant dans le courant de la valeur de consommation, cette recherche contribue à définir les sources de valorisation d’investissement en ECF et en étudie spécifiquement la dimension participative et son influence sur la décision d’investissement.Une revue de littérature en finance entrepreneuriale sur le profil, les motivations, le comportement d’investissement et les facteurs d’influence de la décision d’investissement des crowdinvestors est proposée. Une enquête exploratoire reposant sur 13 entretiens et une étude empirique testant un modèle d’équations structurelles sur la base de 436 questionnaires, ont été menées auprès de membres de la plateforme d’ECF française WiSEED.L’analyse des données menée avec l’approche PLS montre que la valeur perçue de l’expérience de participation a une influence significative sur la valorisation de l’investissement, mais pas sur la décision d’investissement. Nous mettons en évidence le rôle central de l’expertise subjective du capital-amorçage des individus comme antécédent de la décision d’investissement, de la valorisation de l’expérience de participation et de l’engagement dans la communauté en ligne. Enfin, les résultats indiquent que le risque perçu n’est pas un modérateur du modèle tandis que la sophistication de l’investisseur en est un. / Equity crowdfunding is a recent investment mode, opening acces to venture capital to unsophisticated investors. ECF allows platform-based online investment within a virtual community.This research aims to improve understanding of indivual investors financial products consumption, in the ECF context, the so-called crowdinvestors.Building on consumption value theory, this research helps defining ECF-investment value sources for crowdinvestors. It focuses especially on the ‘participation in community’ dimension of ECF as a determinant of various investment behaviors.A litterature review in entrepreneurial finance is presented to define profiles, motivations, investment behaviors and quality signals influencing crowdinvestors’ investment decision.To answer three main research questions, an exploratory study was conducted on 13 members on french ECF platform WiSEED. We put in evidence the difference between the investment experience and the participation in community experienceThus, an empirical study based on a theoretical model is conducted and various PLS analysis are run on a set of 436 surveys answered by WiSEED members. Results show that perceived value of participation experience has a positive and significant influence on perceived value of investment but no influence at all on investment decision.Though, we highlight the central role of individuals’ venture capital expertise both on their investment (amount and number), their engagement within the platform community and their participation experience perceived value. inally, results indicate that perceived risk is not a moderator of the model whereas investor sophistication is.

This dissertation is made of four distinct chapters. In the first chapter, I consider an exogenous restriction on the ability of French trucking firms to extend payment terms to their clients. I find that they provide trade credit at the cost of lower investment, lower return on assets, and higher default risk. In the second chapter, I show that private equity funds with a longer horizon select younger companies at an earlier stage of their development. Companies which receive funding from funds with a longer horizon increase their patent stock significantly more than companies which receive funding from investors with a shorter horizon. The third chapter presents a joint work with Ron Kaniel and David Sraer. We use detailed brokerage account data to provide a quantitative exploration of the behavior of retail investors during the financial crisis of 2008. We show that investors who appear more sophisticated on these dimensions in the pre-crisis period were, in the post-crisis period, less likely to flee to safety, more likely to engage in liquidity provisions and to earn higher returns. In the fourth chapter, I develop the idea that households have an imprecise knowledge of their portfolio's exposure to systematic risk and that this leads them to make investment mistakes. This idea is tested in the context of the decision to actively trade rather than passively invest in the stock market

[pt] Desde o trabalho seminal conduzido por Schumpeter (1934), vários pesquisadores estudaram a relação entre os gastos com Pesquisa, Desenvolvimento & Inovação (P, D e I) e o desempenho das empresas, obtendo evidências contraditórias entre setores, tamanhos das empresas, geografia e graus de desenvolvimento dos mercados. Esta tese tem como objetivo propor, por meio de três ensaios, a criação de um índice que capture um conjunto de ações de empresas listadas na Brasil, Bolsa, Balcão (B3) que investem e declaram investir em P, D e I, bem como produtos financeiros, notadamente Exchange-traded Funds (ETFs), que, atrelados a este índice, possam contribuir para aumentar o volume de negócios das referidas ações, e assim encorajar mais empresas a se envolverem em atividades de P, D e I, bem como, para as que já o fazem, se comprometerem a divulgar essas ações ao mercado. Os resultados indicam ser possível formar uma carteira de empresas que declaram investimento em P, D e I de tal sorte que o desempenho dessas supere o principal benchmark do mercado brasileiro. Para o caso de produtos atrelados a essa carteira teórica, as evidências apontam para a necessidade de se observar o comportamento dos investidores nestes ativos em mercados emergentes como o brasileiro, bem como desenvolver mecanismos que garantam a aderência do produto ao índice, minimizando erros de precificação. / [en] Since the seminal work conducted by Schumpeter (1934), several researchers have studied the relationship between Research, Development and Innovation (R, D and I) expenditures and firms performance, with mixed outputs among sectors, firms sizes, geography, and markets degrees of development. This thesis aims to propose, through three essays, the creation of an index that captures a set of shares of companies listed in Brasil, Bolsa, Balcão (B3) that invest and declare to invest in R, D and I, as well as financial products, notably Exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which, linked to this index, can contribute to increase the volume of transactions of said shares, and thus contribute to more companies engaging in R, D and I activities, as well as, for those that already do, that commit themselves to divulge these actions to the market. The results indicate that it is possible to form a portfolio of companies that declare investment in R, D and I in such a way that their performance exceeds the main benchmark of the Brazilian market. For products linked to this theoretical portfolio, the evidence points to the need to observe the behavior of investors in these assets in emerging markets such as Brazil, as well as to develop mechanisms that guarantee the adherence of the product to the index, minimizing tracking errors.

Cette thèse est constituée de quatre chapitres distincts. Dans le premier chapitre, j'utilise une restriction exogène de la capacité des entreprises de transport routier à consentir des délais de paiement à leurs clients. Je montre que certaines entreprises prêtent à leurs clients au détriment de leurs investissements, de leur rentabilité et en s'exposant au risque de défaillance. Dans le second chapitre, je montre que les fonds d'investissement dont l'horizon est long choisissent des entreprises plus jeunes, à un stade moins avancé de leur développement. Les entreprises investies par des fonds dont l'horizon est plus long accroissent leur stock de brevets plus rapidement que celles qui sont investies par des fonds dont l'horizon est plus court. Le troisième chapitre est le résultat d'une collaboration avec Ron Kaniel et David Sraer. Nous utilisons des données détaillées de courtier et entreprenons une exploration quantitative du comportement des investisseurs individuels pendant la crise financière de 2008. Nous montrons que les investisseurs qui ont l'air les plus sophistiqués dans la période antérieure à la crise ont une propension moins grande à fuir vers les actifs sans risque, et une propension plus grande à être apporteurs de liquidité et à obtenir des rendements élevés pendant la crise. Dans le quatrième chapitre, j'explore l'idée selon laquelle les ménages ont une connaissance limitée de l'exposition de leur portefeuille aux facteurs de risque systématique, ce qui les conduit à faire des erreurs. Cette idée est appliquée à la décision des investisseurs individuels d'intervenir activement plutôt que d'investir passivement sur les marchés d'actions. / This dissertation is made of four distinct chapters. In the first chapter, I consider an exogenous restriction on the ability of French trucking firms to extend payment terms to their clients. I find that they provide trade credit at the cost of lower investment, lower return on assets, and higher default risk. In the second chapter, I show that private equity funds with a longer horizon select younger companies at an earlier stage of their development. Companies which receive funding from funds with a longer horizon increase their patent stock significantly more than companies which receive funding from investors with a shorter horizon. The third chapter presents a joint work with Ron Kaniel and David Sraer. We use detailed brokerage account data to provide a quantitative exploration of the behavior of retail investors during the financial crisis of 2008. We show that investors who appear more sophisticated on these dimensions in the pre-crisis period were, in the post-crisis period, less likely to flee to safety, more likely to engage in liquidity provisions and to earn higher returns. In the fourth chapter, I develop the idea that households have an imprecise knowledge of their portfolio's exposure to systematic risk and that this leads them to make investment mistakes. This idea is tested in the context of the decision to actively trade rather than passively invest in the stock market

Cette thèse est constituée de quatre chapitres distincts. Le premier chapitre présente un travail écrit en collaboration avec Christophe Spaenjers. Nous montrons que les individus avec une espérance de vie subjective qui est plus longue, ont une fraction d'actions conditionnelles qui est augmentée.L'effet d'une espérance de vie qui diminue est atténué par des motifs de légation.Dans le deuxième chapitre, j'étudie l'importance de la séquence de naissance pour les décisions financières.Je montre que les aînés diffèrent de leurs frères et soeurs par leurs décisions.Les résultats accentuent l'importance des expériences familiales pour les choix des agents. Dans le troisième chapitre, je montre que la présence d'un entourage diminue la probabilité d'une réponse, et augmente la propension d'une auto-évaluation exagérée des aptitudes. Cette observation implique une sous-estimation de l'importance de l'aplomb pour le comportement des individus. Le quatrième chapitre est le résultat d'une collaboration avec Thomas Bourveau et François Brochet.Nous identifions les plaintes dont les plaignants allèguent que l'entreprise ait caché une mauvaise performance liée à une acquisition. Utilisant la proclamation des plaintes comme un traitement de l'industrie, nous trouvons des résultats cohérents avec un effet disciplinant le comportement d'investir des autres dirigeants de l'industrie / This dissertation consists of four distinct chapters.The first chapter presents the joint work with Christophe Spaenjers.We find that individuals with longer subjective life horizons hold higher conditional equity shares, and the effect of a shortening life horizon on portolio choice is offset by bequest motives. In the second chapter,I examine the explanatory power of birth order to financial household decisions. I show that firstborns differ in their financial decision-making from later born siblings. The results highlight the importance of personal family experiences for household choices. In the third chapter,I document that, in surveys, the presence of companions decreases the probability of respondents replying, and increases the probability of respondents overreporting their self-assessed abilities. The overreporting leads to a downward bias in the estimates of the importance of overconfidence for individuals' behavior. The fourth chapter presents joint work with Thomas Bourveau and François Brochet. We identify M&A lawsuits, where plaintiffs allege that the firm hid poor performance related to prior acquisition. Using the filing of a lawsuit as an industry shock, we show findings consistent with a disciplining effect from the lawsuit for the investment behavior of peer firms' managers

Diese kumulative Dissertation untersucht die Rolle von Informationen und Finanzkompetenz im deutschen Crowdinvesting-Markt. Die erste Studie erforscht den Zusammenhang zwischen dem Umfang der von Start-Ups auf Companisto veröffentlichen Informationen und dem Investitionsverhalten von Crowdinvestoren auf Basis proprietärer Nutzer-level Companisto-Daten. Meine Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass (unerfahrene) private Investoren, im Gegensatz zu institutionellen Investoren, auch „weiche“ Informationen im Rahmen ihrer Investitionsentscheidungen berücksichtigen. Meine zweite Studie untersucht das tatsächliche Informationsverhalten von Crowdinvestoren im Vorfeld von Investitionen auf Basis von Nutzer-level Google Analytics-Daten. Meine Ergebnisse suggerieren, dass Investoren einen Großteil der von Start-ups bereitgestellten Informationen im Vorfeld von Investitionen ignorieren. Darüber hinaus zeige ich auf, dass das Informationsverhalten von Investoren mit den demografischen Merkmalen, der Crowdinvesting-Erfahrung und den (durchschnittlichen) Investitionsbeträgen von Investoren zusammenhängt. Meine Ergebnisse deuten zudem darauf hin, dass Investoren beim Vorliegen potentieller Indikatoren für die Qualität eines Start-ups bzw. bei weniger riskanten Investitionen, weniger Information akquirieren. In meiner dritten Studie, welche ich gemeinsam mit Joachim Gassen durchführe, untersuche ich den kausalen Effekt einer Online-Finanzschulung auf das Informations- und Investitionsverhalten von Crowdinvestoren im Rahmen eines Feldexperiments auf Companisto. Während das Experiment noch nicht abgeschlossen ist, motiviert der in dieser Dissertation enthaltene Zwischenbericht die zugrundeliegende Forschungsfrage und beschreibt das Forschungsdesign. Die vorläufigen Ergebnisse zeigen auf, dass Crowdinvestoren im Vergleich zu repräsentativen Stichproben der Gesamtpopulation, welche vergleichbaren Studien zugrunde liegen, ein signifikant höheres Maß an finanzieller Grundkompetenz aufweisen. / This cumulative Ph.D. thesis investigates the role of information and financial literacy in the German crowdinvesting market. Using proprietary investor-level data from Companisto, one of the largest German crowdinvesting portals, the first paper explores how the magnitude of start-ups’ disclosures on Companisto is associated with crowdinvestors’ investment behavior. My findings suggest that the investment decisions by both retail and institutional crowdinvestors are positively associated with the magnitude of start-ups’ voluntary disclosures. However, while start-ups’ ‘soft’ disclosures seem to play a role in the decision-making of (inexperienced) retail investors, they appear to be irrelevant for the investment decisions of institutional investors. My second thesis paper uses investor-level Google Analytics data to explore investors’ actual information acquisition prior to investing. My results indicate that crowdinvestors tend to neglect a substantial fraction of start-ups’ disclosures before investing. Moreover, I show that investors’ information acquisition varies with their demographics, their level of crowdinvesting experience as well as their (average) investment amounts. My findings further suggest that investors acquire less information in the presence of potential signals of start-up quality and (thus) in cases where the investment appears to be less risky. In my third paper, which is co-authored by Joachim Gassen, I study the causal effect of online financial training on crowdinvestors’ information and investment behavior by conducting a field experiment on Companisto. While the experiment is still ongoing, the interim report included in my thesis motivates the overall research question and explains the research design. Our preliminary results indicate that, compared to survey samples representative for the overall population, crowdinvestors exhibit a significantly higher level of ‘basic’ financial literacy.

Abstract This dissertation contributes to the research on behavioral biases among individual investors by demonstrating how investors increase their portfolio volatility, i.e., risk, following favorable outcomes. This work also shows the influence of the first investment on subsequent risk-taking preferences. It also shows how stock prices, through unrealized capital gains, create an evident momentum effect following both bull and bear markets. The work is quite new because house money, quasi-hedonic editing rules and mental accounting are not frequently used in the financial literature. The data used are from the Finnish Central Securities Depository (FCSD), which is unique in the financial research literature. The results of the first essay indicate that individual investors purchase stocks that increase portfolio risk or volatility after a period of negative market returns. These results propose that investors attribute these returns to themselves. Therefore, they are supporting a self-attribution bias. Ergo, investors gamble with their winnings over the next investment session. This behavior is consistent with the house money effect, which has not been before analyzed in the background of the stock market. Inexperienced investors are particularly prone to this effect. The second essay investigates the effect of the outcome of the first investment on subsequent risk-taking preferences, which has not been previously analyzed in the context of financial markets. The database allows for analyses of new investors making their first stock market investment. The results show that in first or subsequent investments the win effect is stronger. The effect in the first investment situation results in higher volatility. Therefore, the result suggests that realized money is more likely to be risked in the situation of the first stock than in the situation of the other stocks. The third essay, using a technique not before applied to research regarding momentum asymmetry, shows that deviations from the holdings- or volume-based reference price, i.e., the so-called capital gains overhang, can account for momentum. The results propose that after accounting for the disposition effect, overconfidence and biased self-attribution are not able to explain momentum asymmetry. / Tiivistelmä Väitöskirja edistää yksittäisten sijoittajien käyttäytymishäiriöitä koskevaa tutkimusta osoittamalla, kuinka sijoittajat lisäävät salkun riskiä myönteisten tulosten jälkeen. Väitöskirja osoittaa myös, kuinka sijoittajat lisäävät salkun riskisyyttä ensimmäistä investointia myöhemmille riskinottopäätöksille. Se esittää myös, kuinka realisoitumattomat myyntivoitot aiheuttavat ilmeisen momentum-vaikutuksen, sekä nousevilla että laskevilla markkinoilla. Teos on melko uusi, koska talon rahoilla pelaamista, lähes-hedonisia muokkaussääntöjä ja henkistä kirjanpitoa ei käytetä kovin paljon talouskirjallisuudessa. Käytetyt tiedot ovat Rahoitustutkimuksen ainutlaatuinen Suomen Arvopaperikeskus (FCSD) aineisto. Ensimmäisessä esseessä, kun sijoittajat ovat saavuttaneet tuottoja negatiivisten markkinatuottojen jälkeen, he ostavat osakkeita, jotka lisäävät salkun riskisyyttä. Nämä tulokset viittaavat siihen, että sijoittajat määrittävät nämä tuotot itselleen. Siksi he tukevat itsemääräämisoikeutta, joten sijoittajat pelaavat voitoillaan seuraavan sijoituskauden aikana. Käyttäytyminen on yhdenmukainen talon rahan vaikutuksen kanssa. Vaikutus, jota ei ole aiemmin analysoitu osakemarkkinoiden yhteydessä. Kokemattomat sijoittajat ovat erityisen alttiita tästä vaikutuksesta. Toinen essee tutkii ensimmäisen investoinnin tuloksen vaikutusta myöhempään riskinottopäätökseen. Sitä ei ole aiemmin analysoitu rahoitusmarkkinoiden yhteydessä. Tietokannan avulla analysoidaan uusia sijoittajia, jotka tekevät ensimmäisen pörssi-investoinninsa. Tulokset osoittavat, että kummassakin tapauksessa, ensimmäiset tai toiset voitot, voittoefektit ovat voimakkaammat kuin voitto-dummy ja ensimmäisellä tasolla olevat voitot antavat suuremman vaikutuksen riskisyyteen. Kiinnostavaa on se, että tulo, joka kertoo, onko realisoitunut raha todennäköisemmin riski ensimmäisessä osakkeessa, on suurempi kuin riski muissa osakkeissa. Kolmas essee käyttää menetelmää, jota ei ole aikaisemmin käytetty momentum-symmetrian tutkimukseen. Tämä tutkimus osoittaa, että poikkeamat volyymi- tai omistukseen perustuvasta viitehinnasta, eli ns. myyntivoiton ylitys, voivat selittää momentumia. Tulokset viittaavat siihen, että disposition ja liiallisen itseluottamuksen ja harhaisen itse-attribuution jälkeen ei voida suurella todennäköisyydellä selittää momentumin epäsymmetriaa.

In this paper, market participants’ tendency to form investor herds in the stocks listed on Nasdaq First North Growth Market of Sweden is examined for the period from 2018 to 2023. The models used in this study to detect herd behavior in stocks consist of two measures of dispersions, Cross-Sectional Standard Deviation of returns (CSSD) and Cross-Sectional Absolute Deviation of returns (CSAD), which were proposed by Christie and Huang (1995) and Chang, et al. (2000), respectively. An equally-weighted index consisting of all of the stocks that have traded on this market during the period is created and a quantitative analysis is conducted. Evidence showed absence of herd behavior when using both models, as well as when accounting for robustness tests consisting of small, mid-and large cap portfolios. Our results also support the prediction of rational asset pricing models, which suggest that stock return dispersions around the market returns increase during periods of market stress.