Vorschau

PDF, Englisch Download (1MB) | Nutzungsbedingungen

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 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.