Behavioral Finance and Investor Psychology

A study across a lab experiment and a subway field trial finds that donating surcharge proceeds to charity can substantially weaken the policy's ability to change behavior, unless payers get to pick the beneficiary.

Do everyday investors influence how companies report profits? A new study finds that retail attention, measured through Google searches, is linked to more earnings management at small firms but less at large ones.

A study of 392 Iraqi bank employees links dark personality traits to the urge to quit, finding that a feeling of disconnection from work helps explain the pull toward the exit.

A study of 11 million German employment records finds no link between Western zodiac signs and wages, education, or managerial rank, once seasonal birth patterns are accounted for.

Why do carmakers in the same industry lobby on opposite sides of climate policy? A Princeton study of 11,705 firms finds the answer lies in how each company perceives climate change as opportunity, regulation, or physical threat.

Researchers used the DeepSeek AI model to score 29,077 Chinese financial headlines, then filtered those scores through prospect theory to test whether the results tracked Shanghai Composite Index returns.

An analysis of $2 billion in Airbnb bookings finds that vague, subjective claims like "charming" and "luxurious" boost reservations about as much as factual details do, without hurting guest ratings.

A randomized experiment finds that people substantially overestimate how much a raise will improve their life satisfaction, and correcting that belief shifts their stated choices away from higher-income options.

A survey of 305 people finds that confidence and enjoyment predict crypto investment intentions more strongly than the pursuit of profit — and that risk-takers are motivated mainly by external rewards, not curiosity.

Using random genetic variation as a stand-in for a controlled experiment, researchers estimate that one extra year of schooling raises earnings by about 8% in Norway, higher than conventional methods suggest.