In this paper, we derive and experimentally test a theoretical model of speculation in multi-period asset markets with public information flows. The speculation arises from the traders’ heterogeneous posteriors as they make different inferences from sequences of public information. This leads to overpricing in the sense that price exceeds the most optimistic belief about the real value of the asset. We find evidence of speculative overpricing in both incomplete and complete markets, where the information flow is a gradually revealed sequence of imperfect public signals about the state of the world. We also find evidence of asymmetric price reaction to good news and bad news, another feature of equilibrium price dynamics under our model. Markets with a relaxed short-sale constraint exhibit less overpricing.

We measure individual-level loss aversion using three incentivized, representative surveys of the U.S. population (combined N=3,000). We find that around 50% of the U.S. population is loss tolerant—they are willing to accept negative-expected-value gambles that contain a loss. This is counter to expert predictions and earlier findings—which mostly come from laboratory/student samples—that 70–90% of participants are loss averse. Consistent with the different findings in our study versus the prior literature, loss aversion is more prevalent in people with high cognitive ability. Further, our measure of gain–loss attitudes exhibits similar temporal stability and better predictive power outside our survey than measures of risk aversion. Loss-tolerant individuals are more likely to report recent gambling, investing a higher percentage of their assets in stocks, and experiencing financial shocks. These results support the general hypothesis that individuals value gains and losses differently, and that gain–loss attitudes are an important economic preference. However, the tendency in a large proportion of the population to emphasize gains over losses is an overlooked behavioural phenomenon.

We study the effect of financial resources on decision-making. Low-income U.S. households are randomly assigned to receive an online survey before or after payday. The survey collects measures of cognitive function and administers risk and intertemporal choice tasks. The study design generates variation in cash, checking and savings balances, and expenditures. Before-payday participants behave as if they are more present-biased when making intertemporal choices about monetary rewards but not when making intertemporal choices about non-monetary real-effort tasks. Nor do we find before-after differences in risk-taking, the quality of decision-making, the performance in cognitive function tasks, or in heuristic judgments.