Mental Accounting in Portfolio Choice: Evidence from a Flypaper Effect
发现投资者有时会忽略其他账户的资产配置，只考虑单个账户，这符合心理账户理论。研究基于一家公司改变401(k)匹配规则的情况，对比了规则变化前后投资者的配置行为。
Consistent with mental accounting, we document that investors sometimes choose the asset allocation for one account without considering the asset allocation of their other accounts. The setting is a firm that changed its 401(k) matching rules. Initially, 401(k) enrollees chose the allocation of their own contributions, but the firm chose the match allocation. These enrollees ignored the match allocation when choosing their own-contribution allocation. In the second regime, enrollees selected both accounts' allocations, leading them to integrate the two. Own-contribution allocations before the rule change equal the combined own- and match-contribution allocations afterward, whereas combined allocations differ sharply across regimes.