ABSTRACT Household investment mistakes are an important concern for researchers and policymakers alike. Portfolio underdiversification ranks among those mistakes that are potentially most costly. However, its roots and empirical importance are poorly understood. I estimate quantitatively meaningful diversification statistics and investigate their relationship with key variables. Nearly all households that score high on financial literacy or rely on professionals or private contacts for advice achieve reasonable investment outcomes. Compared to these groups, households with below‐median financial literacy that trust their own decision‐making capabilities lose an expected 50 bps on average. All group differences stem from the top of the loss distribution.

We study the relationship among occupational employment, occupational wages, and wage inequality. In all occupations, entrants and leavers earn less than stayers, suggesting negative selection effects for growing occupations and positive effects for shrinking ones. We estimate a model of occupational prices and skills that includes specific skill accumulation and endogenous switching. Contrary to uncorrected wages, prices and employment growth are positively related. Forty percent of selection is due to age, as entrants and leavers have had less time to accumulate skills. The remainder is Roy-type selection. Skill prices establish a quantitative connection of occupational changes with surging wage inequality.

We analyze risk preferences using an experiment with real incentives in a representative sample of 1,422 Dutch respondents. Our econometric model incorporates four structural parameters that vary with observed and unobserved characteristics: utility curvature, loss aversion, preferences toward the timing of uncertainty resolution, and the propensity to choose randomly rather than on the basis of preferences. We find that all four parameters contribute to explaining choice behavior. The structural parameters are significantly associated with socioeconomic variables, but it is essential to incorporate unobserved heterogeneity in each of them to match the rich variety of choice patterns in the data. (JEL D12, D81)