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Hubris Or Talent? Estimating The Role Of Overconfidence In Chinese Households’ Investment Decisions, Jing Xu, Maroula Khraiche, Xi Mao, Xuan Wang

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications and Presentations

We document the extent to which overconfidence in one’s financial literacy (FL overconfidence) plays a role in households’ reported financial risk aversion and their actual investment behavior, using data from the China Household Finance Survey. We measure FL overconfidence by estimating the gap between people’s self-reported financial literacy and their objectively measured financial knowledge. Our results indicate that FL overconfidence is negatively associated with self-reported financial risk aversion. Additionally, FL overconfidence is positively associated with the likelihood of having a brokerage account, holding risky financial instruments (other than just stock), and a proportion of assets allocated towards risky assets. We …