Social comparisons, reference points and financial risk-taking

This cumulative dissertation investigates the influence of social comparisons on financial risk-taking, with a particular focus on factors that moderate this relationship. The first paper examines how social anchors versus non-social anchors affect financial risk-taking within the framework of Prospect Theory’s value function (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Tversky & Kahneman, 1992). The second paper explores the impact of rank-based endowments on risk-taking, contingent on different rank determinants, particularly with respect to the degree of individual control. It further investigates whether this effect is primarily driven by monetary preferences or by social comparison motives. The third paper analyzes whether providing information about the average expected payoff in risk-taking experiments constitutes a confounding factor, and thus impacts experimental results.