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History-Dependent Risk Preferences: Evidence from Individual Choices and Implications for the Disposition Effect

Review of Financial Studies 2020 33(8), 3674-3718 open access
Using trading data from a sports wagering market, we estimate individuals’ dynamic risk preferences within a prospect theory paradigm. This market’s experimental-like features facilitate preference estimation, and our long panel enables us to study whether preferences vary across individuals and depend on earlier outcomes. Our estimates extend support for experimental findings—mild utility curvature, moderate loss aversion, and probability overweighting of extreme outcomes—to a market setting and reveal that preferences are heterogeneous and history dependent. Applying our estimates to a portfolio choice problem, we show prospect theory can better explain the prevalence of the disposition effect than previously thought.

Reassessing False Discoveries in Mutual Fund Performance: Skill, Luck, or Lack of Power?

Journal of Finance 2019 74(5), 2667-2688 open access
Barras, Scaillet, and Wermers propose the false discovery rate (FDR) to separate skill (alpha) from luck in fund performance. Using simulations with parameters informed by the data, we find that this methodology is conservative and underestimates the proportion of nonzero‐alpha funds. For example, 65% of funds with economically large alphas of are misclassified as zero alpha. This bias arises from the low signal‐to‐noise ratio in fund returns and the resulting low statistical power. Our results question FDR's applicability in performance evaluation and other domains with low power, and can materially change the conclusion that most funds have zero alpha.

Not in my backyard: intrinsic motivation and corporate pollution abatement

Review of Finance 2025 29(4), 1067-1104 open access
We investigate whether managers’ intrinsic incentives affect firms’ environmental policies. Exploiting within-facility variation in facility-to-CEO-birthplace distances, we find that facilities located near CEOs’ birthplaces experience toxic emission reductions relative to those farther away. This is achieved by reducing waste generation at source rather than by downsizing operations or substituting pollution across locations. The effect is strongest for hometown facilities in high-polluting areas, and in firms with higher cash holdings and with CEOs with weaker pay incentives. Our results suggest that local representation in management could be a powerful means of encouraging corporate pollution abatement.