Madrian’s research on portfolio risk-taking wins TIAA award

The TIAA Institute announced on Jan. 5 that John Beshears, David Laibson, and Brigitte Madrian of Harvard University and James Choi of Yale University have won the 22nd Annual TIAA Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security. The Samuelson Award recognizes outstanding research that the private and public sectors can use to maintain and enhance Americans’ financial well-being.

The researchers were awarded for their paper “Does Aggregated Returns Disclosure Increase Portfolio Risk-Taking?” which examines previous studies’ findings that participants take more investment risks if they see returns less frequently, see portfolio-level returns, or see long-horizon historical distributions. The authors offer a different perspective that challenges what has been widely accepted about how investor behaviors and disclosure policies impact risk taking.