You Can't Always Get What You Want---An Experiment on Finance Professionals' Decisions for Others

• DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4342023
• Publication Date: 2023-01-31T17:32:16Z
• Authors: Matthias Stefan; Martin Holmen; Felix Holzmeister; Michael Kirchler; Erik Wengström
• Keywords: Investment; Investment Decisions

We run an investment experiment with 408 finance professionals (agents) and 550 participants from the general population (clients). vary mode of decision-making (investment on one’s own account vs. behalf clients) agents' incentives (aligned fixed). find that show higher quality than when investing for themselves. However, deciding clients, professionals' does not differ their irrespective incentives. Our results further identify challenges in risk communication, as professionals’ portfolios considerable overlaps portfolio across levels requested by clients.