Do wealth shocks affect the health of the elderly in developed countries? The economic literature is skeptical about such effects which have so far only been found for poor retirees in poor countries. In this paper I show that wealth shocks also matter for the health of wealthy retirees in the US. I exploit the booms and busts in the US stock market as a natural experiment that generated considerable gains and losses in the wealth of stock-holding retirees. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study I construct wealth shocks as the interaction of stock holdings with stock market changes. These constructed wealth shocks are highly predictive of changes in reported wealth. And they strongly affect health outcomes. A 10% wealth shock leads to an improvement of 2-3% of a standard deviation in physical health, mental health and survival rates. Effects are heterogeneous across physical health conditions, with most pronounced effects for the incidence of high blood pressure, smaller effects for heart problems and no effects for arthritis, diabetes, lung diseases and cancer. The comparison with the cross-sectional relationship of wealth and health suggests that the estimated effects of wealth shocks are larger than the long-run wealth elasticity of health.
Verhaltensexperimente offenbaren: Frauen sind grosszügiger als Männer. Nun belegen UZH-Neuroökonomen, dass die Gehirne von Frauen und Männern soziales und egoistisches Verhalten unterschiedlich verarbeiten. Bei Frauen löst Grosszügigkeit ein stärkeres Belohnungssignal aus, während Männer bei egoistischem Verhalten mehr Belohnungsaktivität zeigen.
Auch im diesjährigen Ranking der "Top 100 Women in Business in der Schweiz" ist sie wieder dabei: Prof. Uschi Backes-Gellner gehört als eine von 18 Wissenschaftlerinnen zu den führenden Frauen in der Schweizer Wirtschaft.
Das UN-Entwicklungsprogramm arbeitet neu mit der Universität Zürich zusammen.Marc Chesney vom Institut für Banking und Finance und sein Team unterstützen die Vereinten Nationen, ihre Ziele zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung zu erreichen.
We demonstrate that investor satisfaction and investment behavior are influenced substantially by the price path by which the final investor return is achieved. In a series of experiments, we analyze various different price paths. Investors are most satisfied if their assets first fall in value and then recover, and they are least satisfied with the opposite pattern, independent of whether the final return is positive or negative. Price paths systematically influence risk preferences, return beliefs, and ultimately trading decisions. Our results enable a much more holistic perspective on a wide range of topics in finance, such as the disposition effect, risk-taking behavior after previous gains and losses, and behavioral asset pricing.
With infinite horizon, optimal rules for sequential search from a known distribution feature a constant reservation value that is independent of whether recall of past options is possible. We extend this result to the the case when there are multiple distributions to choose from: it is optimal to sample from the same distribution in every period and to continue searching until a constant reservation value is reached.
Mithilfe einer Spezialkamera lassen Forschende vom Institut für Informatik Drohnen auch bei schlechten Lichtbedingungen und bei schnellen Manövern sicher fliegen. Dies eröffnet den Drohnenflügen neue Anwendungen – zum Beispiel bei der Suche nach Vermissten in der Dämmerung oder bei Morgengrauen.
You are warmly invited to the inaugural lecture of Prof. Damian Kozbur titled "From Observation to Understanding". The inaugural lecture is public and will take place in the Aula of the University of Zurich.
You are warmly invited to the inaugural lecture of Prof. David Hémous on "Innovation and Inequalities". The lecture is public and will take place in the Aula of the University of Zurich.
Alle zwei Jahre publiziert das Handelsblatt eine Liste der forschungsstärksten Ökonominnen und Ökonomen sowie der forschungsstärksten VWL-Institutionen. Die Universität Zürich führt die aktuelle Rangliste mit Abstand an, vor der Universität Mannheim und der ETH. Unter den Top 100 der Forschenden sind allein 10 von der UZH.
