Finance Chair @Radboud University

The finance group at Radboud University, organized in the Chair of Finance, conducts research in various fields of finance. The group is particularly strong in behavioral finance, experimental finance and behavioral decision making. Our young and energetic researchers have recently published in the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, American Economic Review, Management Science and Review of Finance. Close connections exist to the Society for Experimental Finance. We organized different workshops, (online) meetings and the Experimental Finance World Conference in Nijmegen.

News/Upcoming events

2022-08: We welcome Alexander Nieber as a new member and external PhD Candidate of the Chair of Finance!

2022-08: New publication: Fenneman, A., Füllbrunn, S., Goldbach, C., & Pitz, T. (forthcoming). Psychological price perception may exert a weaker effect on purchasing decisions than previously suggested: results from a large online experiment fail to reproduce either a left-digit or perceptual-fluency effect. Plos One

2022-08: New publication: Füllbrunn, S., & Neugebauer, T. (2022). Testing market regulations in experimental asset markets - The case of margin purchases. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 200, August 2022, pages 1160 - 1183

2022-08: We welcome Jorgo Goossens as a new member and Assistant Professor of the Chair of Finance!

2022-07: New publication in the Review of Financial Studies: Heeb, F., Kölbel, J.F., Paetzold, F., & Zeisberger, S. Do investors care about impact?

2022-06: New working paper: Bao, T., Füllbrunn, S., Pei, J., & Zong, J. Reading the Market? Expectation Coordination and Theory of Mind.

2022-06: New working paper: Eckel, C. Füllbrunn, S., Huber, C., & Weitzel, U. Heterogeneity of Beliefs and Trading Behavior - A reexamination.

2022-05: Sascha Füllbrunn – together with Stefan Trautmann and Wolfgang Luhan – received a grant from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation to cover travel, accommodation and catering costs for all active participants for their conference on "Risky Decision Making for Others - Cognition, responsibility and risk preferences" planned for October 2022 in Portsmouth.

2022-03: New publication: K. Fairley, J. Vyrastekova; U. Weitzel; A.G. Sanfey (2022). “Beyond lottery-evoked ambiguity aversion: the neural signature of the types and the sources of uncertainty”, Neuroimage. 251:119007 (OPEN ACCESS article)

2022-02: We are happy to announce that Jorgo Goossens will join our group later this year as a new assistant professor.

Selected Project and Impact

International Virtual Experimental Finance Workshop (vEFW)

Sascha Füllbrunn, together with Ernan Haruvy (McGill University, Montreal), hosted the first virtual Experimental Finance Workshop on November 11^th and November 18^th via zoom. On each day, eight speakers presented their current research projects accompanied by discussants. More than one-hundred participants each day listened to talks related to experimental finance methodology, which includes testing market anomalies, understanding trader’s and investor’s behavioural biases or testing decision models, among others.

On the first day, Martin Weber (University of Mannheim, Germany) gave the keynote on the relevance of experiments in finance.

Charles Noussair (University Arizona) held the second keynote about quantile preference together with his view on the methodology.

Sascha and Ernan used the meeting to talk about the setup of their planned Handbook of Experimental Finance. This meeting was co-presented by the hotspot Integrated Decision Making.

A third meeting was scheduled took place on January 13^th 2021 with Brice Corgnet (EM-Lyin Business School) being the keynote speaker.

Collaboration with Ministry of Finance in the "Actieplan Consumentenkeuzes"

Together with researchers from the University of Zurich, European Business School, MIT Sloan School of Management, Stefan Zeisberger participated in the first round Actieplan Consumentenkeuzes. The research and impact project was further a collaboration with the European Investors (VEB). The project explored how financial consumers and impact investors perceive impact and to what extent they are willing to pay more for higher levels of impact. The project results have been presented at various academic and practitioner conferences such as the AFA Annual Meeting, GRASFI, MPI Bonn, Experimental Finance, many universities but also, on the practitioner and policy side the VEB, Dutch Banker Association, Authority for Financial Markets and many others. Together with other project about how to improve consumer choices generally, this project was part of a Kamerbrief.

It ultimately led to a publication in the Review of Financial Studies.

More information on Banknieuws and Wijzer in Geldzaken

Minister of Finance delivered a research report from IMR researchers to the Tweede Kamer

The Dutch Minister of Finance Wopke Hoekstra delivered the research report “Niet-bancaire kredietverlening – een blik in de black box” by Sascha Füllbrunn, Dirk-Jan Janssen and Utz Weitzel to the Dutch House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer). The research project aimed to open the ‘black box’ of online credit provision in the Netherlands for small companies and self-employed people, for whom the consumer credit protection does not hold. The researchers analysed the web-pages of the credit providers, conducted a survey with the credit takers and the credit providers, and sent registered self-employed people to request credits from the online credit providers (Mystery Shopping).

They find the effective annual rate (jaarlijkse kostenpercentages) within a range of 8% and 421%, depending on the credit amount and duration. The relevant cost factors were often not clearly communicated such that the rates provided are still estimates for some of the credit providers. The credit takers only received detailed information after submitting personal information. Even though the credit providers advertise their background check to be quick and without the necessity to provide plenty of documents, the actual process did not always match the promise as mystery shoppers found out. However, the survey in line with earlier reports shows that the number of credit requests and credit needs was still below 25%. At the very end, those respondents requested regular bank loans often lacking further knowledge about alternative financing opportunities.

The Dutch Ministry of Finance commissioned this project. The researchers got valuable support from the AFM, Stichting MKB Financiering, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, DYNATA, EXCAP and colleagues from the Institute for Management Research.

Read the report next to the letter of the Dutch Minister of Finance.

Experiential learning

Five new innovative education 'proeftuinen' (experimental gardens) were awarded during a festive meeting on 13 June. All the winners will start working on their project in the area of ICT in education in the new academic year. The proeftuinen are facilitated by the ICT in Education programme. One of the winners is Sascha Füllbrunn, Associate Professor of Financial Economics.

Sascha Füllbrunn will use his proeftuin for “learning by reflecting on what has been done”. In several of the courses within the Economy degree program, the influence of behavioral prejudice or literacy (financial, risk, graphical) on human decision making is discussed.

Students now learn from theories, but with his proeftuin, Füllbrunn wants to create an environment in which students can experience situations in which they are required to make decisions. Depending on the decision taken, the student will receive feedback. This confronts them with the decision-making process that is related to the theory. This way, the student will gain a better understanding of where the decision-making deviates from optimal behaviour and will hopefully experience a “Eureka! moment”.