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We exploit account-level data from the Shanghai Stock Exchange to investigate. how life-time experiences affect individual investors’ demand for ESG stocks. We show that ESG demand is shaped by economic and non-economic experiences, such as growing up in a region with more pro-social values, being exposed to increased pollution or to a natural disaster. Recent experiences tend to matter more, and noneconomic experiences are particularly important to explain how investors change their ESG demand during their trading life. We provide suggestive evidence that these experiences affect investors’ intrinsic preferences for ESG stocks.

We connect various streams of academic literature to shed light on how the degree of interoperability in mobile payments affects market outcomes and welfare. We organize our discussion around four dimensions of interoperability. First, we consider mobile network interoperability (whether clients of one telecom can access another telecom’s payment services) in connection with the IO literature on tying. Second, we discuss platform level interoperability (the ability to send money offnetwork) in light of the literature on compatibility. We also build on the behavioral IO literature to suggest how the effects of interoperability may be very heterogeneous across various types of firms and consumers, or even backfire. Third, we consider interoperability in the cash-in-cash-out agent network, in light of the literature on co-investment in network industries, and of more specific studies on ATMs’ interoperability. Fourth, we discuss how the literature in banking and on data ownership can be used to understand interoperability of data. We conclude with some broader remarks on policy implications and on possible directions for future research.

We study the introduction of robo-advising on a large representa-tive sample of Employee Saving Plans. Dierently from many services that fully automate portfolio decisions, our robo-advisor proposes in- vestment and rebalancing strategies, leaving investors free to follow or ignore them. We focus on the resulting human-robot interactions and show that with the robo-service investors increase their attention to the portfolio, their investment in the plan, their equity exposure. They experience higher risk-adjusted returns, mostly by changing their re-balancing so to stay closer to the target. These eects are robust across various specications accounting for the endogeneity of the take-up decision, and they are stronger for investors with smaller portfolios, lower baseline returns and stock market participation. Our results suggest that automated advice can promote nancial inclusion, and they high- light how human-robot interactions can in uence investors' portfolio decisions and possibly improve nancial capability.

We explore how the separation between ownership and control a§ects Örm productivity. Using administrative panel data on the universe of limited liability Örms in Finland, we document a substantial increase in productivity when the CEO obtains majority ownership or when the majority owner becomes the CEO. We exploit plausibly exogenous variations to CEO turnover, induced by shocks to the CEO spouseís health. Extending the analysis beyond typical samples of large public Örms, we show that our e§ects are stronger in medium-sized private Örms. We also investigate possible mechanisms and provide suggestive evidence that increased ownership boosts CEOís e§ort at work.

Consider a rm owned by shareholders with heterogeneous beliefs and run by a manager who chooses random production plans. Shareholders do not observe the chosen plan but only its realization. The nancial market consists of assets contingent on production realizations. A contract for the manager species her compensation as a function of the rms production and possibly some restrictions to trade in the nancial market. Shareholders are unrestricted. We dene a concept of equilibrium between the manager and shareholders such that the equilibrium production plan is unanimously preferred by the manager and the shareholders, markets clear and the manager has no incentive to cheat. We rst analyze the properties of such equilibria and in particular show that the contract should restrict the manager from trading. We next provide a framework where such equilibria exist. We lastly study the properties of equilibrium compensations when shareholders have beliefs that can be ranked in terms of optimism towards the equilibrium plan. Specic attention is given to their departure from linear compensations.

Consider a Örm owned by shareholders with heterogeneous beliefs and discount rates who delegate to a manager the choice of a production plan. The shareholders and the manager can trade contingent claims in a complete asset market. Shareholders cannot observe the chosen production plan and design a compensation scheme so that at equilibrium the manager chooses the plan they prefer and reveals it truthfully. We show that at equilibrium i) proÖt is maximized, ii) the manager gets a constant share of production, iii) she has no incentive to trade. We then show that such equilibrium exists if and only if the manager has the same belief and discount rate as the representative shareholder. This allows us to characterize the required characteristics of the manager as a function of shareholdersí characteristics.

We study banks incentive to pool assets of heterogeneous quality when investors evaluate pools by extrapolating from limited sampling. Pooling assets of heterogeneous quality induces dispersion in investors valuations without affecting their average. Prices are determined by market clearing assuming that investors cannot borrow nor short-sell. A monopolistic bank has the incentive to create heterogeneous bundles only when investors have enough money. When the number of banks is sufficiently large, oligopolistic banks choose extremely heterogeneous bundles, even when investors have little money and even if this turns out to be collectively detrimental to the banks. If in addition banks can originate low quality assets, even at a cost, this collective inefficiency is exacerbated and pure welfare losses arise. Robustness to the presence of rational investors and to the possibility of short-selling is discussed.

Bundling assets of heterogeneous quality results in dispersed valuations when these are based on investor-specific samples from the pool. A monop olistic bank has the incentive to create heterogeneous bundles only when investors have enough money as in that case prices are driven by more opti- mistic valuations. When the number of banks is sufficiently large, oligopolistic banks choose extremely heterogeneous bundles even when investors have little money and even if this turns out to be collectively detrimental to the banks, which we refer to as a Bundler.s Dilemma.

We match administrative panel data on portfolio choices with survey data on preferences over ambiguity. We show that ambiguity averse investors bear more risk, due to a lack of diversification. In particular, they exhibit a form of home bias that leads to higher exposure to the domestic relative to the international stock market. While more sensitive to market factors, their returns are on average higher, suggesting that ambiguity averse investors need not be driven out of the market for risky assets. We also show that these investors rebalance their portfolio more actively and in a contrarian direction relative to past market trends, which allow them to keep their risk exposure relatively constant over time. We discuss these findings in relation to the theoretical literature on portfolio choice under ambiguity.

We match administrative panel data on portfolio choices with survey measures of financial literacy. When we control for portfolio risk, the most literate households experience 0.4% higher annual returns than the least literate households. Distinct portfolio dynamics are the key determinant of this difference. More literate households hold riskier positions when expected returns are higher. They more actively rebalance their portfolios and do so in a way that holds their risk exposure relatively constant over time. They are more likely to buy assets that provide higher returns than the assets that they sell.

In this paper, we formalize the view that economic development requires high rates of productive entrepreneurship, and this requires an efficient matching between entrepreneurial talent and production technologies. We first explore the role of financial development in promoting such efficient allocation of talent, which results in higher production, job creation and social mobility. We then show how different levels of financial development may endogenously arise in a setting in which financial constraints depend on individual incentives to misbehave, these incentives depend on how many jobs are available, and this in turn depends on the level of financial development. Such complementarity between labour market and financial market development may generate highly divergent development paths even for countries with very similar initial conditions.

Procurement awarding mechanisms based on average price have been advocated to soften price competition and reduce cost overruns. We show that their theoretical support is shaky. When the bid closest to the average is awarded, firms submit identical bids, making the selection extremely costly and random, without reducing opportunistic behaviors ex-post. When instead the bid closest and below the average is awarded, the equilibrium is very sensitive to firms’ production and participation costs. Either it displays tougher competition than in a first price auction, or it induces firms to randomize their bids.

We explore the implications of migrants' self-selection for the determination of immigration policy in a simple model where incentives and resources to migrate vary with skills. We show how self-selection determines the response of potential migrants to immigration policy changes, which is crucial for predicting the effects of such policy in the receiving country. For example, restricting immigration when it is low skilled may worsen self-selection and thus the receiving country skill distribution. These selection effects may lead low skilled natives to support a more restrictive policy even though current immigrants are not harmful for them, and the receiving country government to impose significant restrictions even in a purely utilitarian world.