The Journal of Finance

The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.

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Search results: 2.

Goal Setting and Saving in the FinTech Era

Published: 04/11/2024   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13339

ANTONIO GARGANO, ALBERTO G. ROSSI

We study the effectiveness of saving goals in increasing individuals' savings using data from a Fintech app. Using a difference‐in‐differences identification strategy that randomly assigns users into a group of beta testers who can set goals and a group of users who cannot, we find that setting goals increases individuals' savings rate. The increased savings within the app do not reduce savings outside the app. Moreover, goal setting helps those individuals previously identified as having the lowest propensity to save. Matching App user survey responses to their behavior highlights the relative merits of monitoring and concreteness channels in explaining our findings.


Decentralized Investment Management: Evidence from the Pension Fund Industry

Published: 01/30/2013   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12024

DAVID BLAKE, ALBERTO G. ROSSI, ALLAN TIMMERMANN, IAN TONKS, RUSS WERMERS

Using a unique data set, we document two secular trends in the shift from centralized to decentralized pension fund management over the past few decades. First, across asset classes, sponsors replace generalist balanced managers with better‐performing specialists. Second, within asset classes, funds replace single managers with multiple competing managers following diverse strategies to reduce scale diseconomies as funds grow larger relative to capital markets. Consistent with a model of decentralized management, sponsors implement risk controls that trade off higher anticipated alphas of multiple specialists against the increased difficulty in coordinating their risk‐taking and the greater uncertainty concerning their true skills.