Security Returns and Tax Aversion Bias: Behavioral Responses to Tax Labels

This article studies behavioral responses to taxes in financial markets. It is motivated by recent puzzling empirical evidence of taxable municipal bond yields significantly exceeding the level expected relative to tax exempt bonds. A behavioral explanation is a tax aversion bias, the phenomenon that people perceive an additional burden associated with tax payments. We conduct market experiments on the trading of differently taxed and labeled securities. The data show an initial overvaluation of tax payments that diminishes when subjects gain experience. The tax deduction of expenses is valued more than an equivalent tax exemption of earnings. We find that the persistence of the tax aversion bias critically depends on the quality of feedback. This suggests that tax aversion predominantly occurs in one-time, unfamiliar financial decisions and to a lesser extent in repetitive choices.     

Behavioral Factors in Equity Allocation Decisions: A Large-Scale Experimental Study With Context

Traditional models of rational behavior struggle to explain how individuals allocate their money over a variety of financial instruments, including annuities, the stock market, and risk-free bonds. This study uses a large and diverse data set from an investment experiment that is rich in context and captures some important features of actual financial decision making. The focus of the article is to build on the literature documenting behavioral explanations for investment choices by studying the equity allocation decision across different financial tools. The authors find evidence that risk aversion, inertia, and excessive extrapolation are associated with investment behavior even when it is clear that return rates are independent across decision-making periods. Further, subjects have an asymmetric response to positive versus negative returns. In addition to having a novel experimental design, the authors also examine behavior before and after the recent financial crisis. The authors find that the financial crisis indirectly affects the first-stage annuity take-up rate in the experiments vis-à-vis a higher average level of risk aversion after the start of the crisis.     

行为金融视角下中国证券市场投资策略研究

本文根据我国证券投资基金发展的实际情况,运用代理关系下的有限套利模型和行为资产组合理论,建立面板数据模型,对影响我国基金投资收益的因素进行了实证研究。得出以下结论:代理关系和心理账户对证券投资基金的收益影响显著;对于基金的代理人——基金经理而言,建立有效的基金经理人信用评级制度有利于培养优秀的机构投资者,同时可促进我国证券市场的健康发展。