TY  - UNPD
A1  - Hackethal, Andreas
A1  - Hanspal, Tobin
A1  - Hartzmark, Samuel M.
A1  - Bräuer, Konstantin
T1  - Educating investors about dividends
N2  - We educate investors with significant dividend holdings about the benefits of dividend reinvestment and the costs of misperceiving dividends as additional, free income. The intervention increases planned dividend reinvestment in survey responses. Using trading records, we observe a corresponding causal increase in dividend reinvestment in the field of roughly 50 cents for every euro received. This holds relative to their prior behavior and a placebo sample. Investors who learned the most from the intervention update their trading by the largest extent. The results suggest the free dividends fallacy is a significant source of dividend demand. Our study demonstrates that simple, targeted, and focused educational interventions can affect investment behavior.
T3  - SAFE working paper - 420 
KW  - Investor education
KW  - dividends
KW  - free dividend fallacy
KW  - educational intervention
Y1  - 2024
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/71575
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-715755
UR  - https://ssrn.com/abstract=4827769
N1  - Funding: Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE
PB  - SAFE
CY  - Frankfurt am Main
ER  -