题目：Whom to Educate? Financial Fraud and Investor Awareness

主讲人：黄阳光

时间： 2017年4月19日 15：00-16：15

地点：暨南大学中惠楼106B会议室

主办方：暨南大学经济与社会研究院

主讲人简介：

黄阳光，现任香港科技大学经济学助理教授。他于华盛顿大学经济学硕士与博士学位，于中山大学获得学士学位。他的研究领域为产业组织和应用微观经济学。他专注于将经济学模型与结构计量结合起来研究政策导向的话题。

Abstract:

Financial fraud is a prevailing issue, especially in developing countries. We study how investors are exploited by too-high-to-be-true financial products using a model in which a fraction of investors are unaware of the possibility of financial fraud. Unaware investors purchase financial products that are inconsistent with the their risk attitudes, and their behaviors, in turn, provide incentive for firm to conduct financial fraud. Reducing the fraction of unaware investor induces firm to behave honestly, and financial fraud disappear if this fraction drops below a certain threshold.

With this insight, we conduct a field experiment in Shenzhen, China, which experimentally measure investor's risk attitude and the effect of an eye-opening financial education program. We find that, the efficacy of education program depends on investor's risk attitude, financial literacy measure, and demographic characteristics. The education program significantly reduces an investor's possibility of investing in financial frauds, especially for those who are risk-averse. Therefore, compared to assigning the education program randomly, targeting on risk averse investors will be more effective. Using the data from our experiment and survey, we conduct a counterfactual analysis to quantify this effect.