Seminar Vol. 208

Title: Risk Attitude and Portfolio Choice: An Intra-household Perspective

Speaker: Weilong Zhang, University of Cambridge

Time: December 19th, 2019   13:30-15:00

Venue: Conference Room 106B, IESR, Zhonghui Building (College of Economics)

About the speaker:

Dr. Weilong Zhang is an Assistant Professor at the School of Economics, University of Cambridge. His current research focuses on the role of personality traits in determining individuals' decisions both in the labor market and within the household. He also has broadly interested in the general evaluation of labor market policies. He has published several papers in top journals, including Quantitative Economics, and European Economic Review. He received a Ph.D. in Economics from University of Pennsylvania, and a Master in Economics and a B.A. in Mathematics from the Renmin University of China.

Abstract:

Using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) data, we document that the households whose financial decision-makers are husbands are more attached to the financial market than those whose decision-makers are wives. To explain this fact, we develop a simple intra-household bargaining model of household portfolio choice, in which the couple first collectively decides the household risk preference, which, in turn, determines their portfolio allocations. The bargaining power of each spouse depends on a wide range of economic and non-economic characteristics. Our channel decomposition analysis shows the risk related variables (income, education, cognitive ability and financial literacy) are the most important ones in explaining the gender asymmetric associations between the bargaining power and household investment decisions. Incorporating Big- five personality traits in the bargaining equation reduces the household risk preference and therefore leads to the decrease of stock market participation rates, which is opposite to the effect of gender identify norm.