Top publication by Døskeland and Kværner
The article "Cancer and Portfolio Choice: Evidence from Norwegian Register Data" has been published in Review of Finance.
Review of Finance is included on the Financial Times Research Rank List, and it is also on level 4 in the ABS Academic Journal Guide.
Døskeland, Trond M., and Jens Sørlie Kværner: Cancer and Portfolio Choice: Evidence from Norwegian Register Data, Review of Finance, Online 23.08.2021.
Abstract
We examine the personal investment decisions of 60,000 households following a cancer diagnosis. To create a control group that minimizes the likelihood that the results are confounded by lifestyle factors, we rely on households diagnosed with the same diagnosis but a few years later. Our estimates show that a cancer diagnosis reduces households’ willingness to take risks with their financial wealth.
We use the vast heterogeneity among cancers regarding its impact on life expectancy and income to analyze through which channels cancer impact risk-taking. We find that cancers that have a greater impact on life expectancy and income cause a larger reduction in risk-taking. These two channels account for about 40 to 90 percent of the estimated effects of cancer on personal investment decisions. We do not find any association between having dealt with cancer many years ago and current portfolio choices.