While popular with policymakers, most evidence on consumer financial disclosure’s effectiveness studies borrowing decisions (where optimality is unclear) or lab experiments (where attention is not scarce). We provide field evidence from randomized controlled trials with 124,000 savings account holders at five UK depositories. Treated consumers were disclosed varying degrees of salient information about alternative products, including one with their current provider strictly dominating their current product. Despite switching taking roughly 15 minutes and the moderate average potential gains ($190/year), switching is rare across disclosure designs and depositors. We find pessimistic beliefs drive disclosure inattention and limit disclosure’s effectiveness, helping explain deposit stickiness.

This paper examines trading patterns and market integration using laboratory asset markets. Our markets are designed to approximately correspond to the trading day for stocks cross-listed in markets in Europe and North America. Some of our markets feature timing restrictions so that participants cannot trade across markets except during a fully integrated overlap period. Comparison of markets with and without timing restrictions shows that restrictions reduce trading activity and shift transactions to the overlap period. When asset values are extreme, price discovery can be impeded when trading restrictions exist. The measurement of liquidity suggests that trading restrictions increase overall spreads.