Finance Chair @Radboud University

The finance group at Radboud University, organized in the Chair of Finance, conducts research in various fields of finance. The group is particularly strong in behavioral finance, experimental finance and behavioral decision making. Our young and energetic researchers have recently published in the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, American Economic Review, Management Science and Review of Finance. Close connections exist to the Society for Experimental Finance. We organized different workshops, (online) meetings and the Experimental Finance World Conference in Nijmegen.

The group is embedded in the Department of Economics and Business Economics in the Nijmegen School of Management. The department has more researchers in related disciplines also with behavioral research background. We also keep connections to the industry and institutions such as major banks, ministries and regulatory institutions both nationally and in Europe.  

The chair offers teaching courses in all areas of finance and on all levels. These include risk management, financial regulation, corporate finance, the functioning of financial markets (price formation etc.), financial innovation, and of course behavioral and experimental finance. All members of the chair regularly supervise bachelor and master theses.

Feel free to contact Stefan Zeisberger.

News/Upcoming events

2024-04: Radboud University hosts the Experimental Sustainable Finance Symposium (April 24 - 26), organized by Sascha Füllbrunn, Sébastien Duchêne, and Peiran Jiao. Registration for presentation or participation is open until March 24.

2024-01: New publication: Bao, T., Füllbrunn, S., Pei, J., Zong, J. (2024). Reading the Market? Expectation Coordination and Theory of Mind. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 

2023-12: New publication: Fisar, M., Greiner, B., Huber, C., Katok, E., Ozkes, A., Goossens, J., Kopányi-Peuker, A., Nolte, S., et al. [multi-authored](forthcoming). Reproducibility in Management Science. Management Science

2023-12: New publication: Andraszewicz, S., Kaszás, D., Zeisberger, S., & Hölscher, C. (2023). The influence of upward social comparison on retail trading behavior. Nature Scientific Reports

2023-12: New publication: Brown, M., Schmitz, J., & Zehnder, C. (forthcoming). Communication and Hidden Action: A Credit Market Experiment. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

2023-11: New publication: Brown, M., Schmitz, J., & Zehnder, C. (forthcoming). Moral constraints, social norm enforcement and strategic default in weak and strong economic conditions. Journal of Money, Credit & Banking

2023-11: New publication: Hanaki, N., Hommes, C. Kopányi, D., Kopányi-Peuker, A., & Tuinstra, J. (2023). Forecasting returns instead of prices exacerbates financial bubbles. Experimental Economics

2023-11: We congratulate Jorgo Goossens and Stefan Zeisberger for receiving a Netspar Theme Grant of 350.000€ for their research on understanding, measuring, and applying sustainability preferences!

2023-06: New publication: Fenneman, A., Nolte, S., Janssen, D.-J., & Zeisberger, S. (2023). Nomen est omen? How and when company name fluency affects return expectations. PLOS ONE

2023-05: New publication: Hoyer, K., Zeisberger, S., Breugelmans, S. and Zeelenberg, M. (forthcoming).  A Culture of Greed: Bubble Formation in Experimental Asset Markets with Greedy and Non-Greedy Traders. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

2023-04: New publication: Dreber, A., Holzmeister, F., Huber, C. Huber, J., Johannesson, M., Kirchler, M., Weitzel, U., Schmitz, J., Zeisberger, S., et al. [multi-authored](forthcoming). Competition & Moral Behavior: A Meta-Analysis of 45 Crowd-Sourced Experimental Designs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

2023-02: New publication: Menkveld, A., Dreber, A., Holzmeister, F., Huber, J. Johannesson. M., Kirchler, M., Razen, M., Weitzel, U., Füllbrunn, S., Nolte, S., Zeisberger, S. et al. [multi-authored] (forthcoming). Non-Standard Errors.  Journal of Finance

2023-02: We welcome Michel Rötter as a new member and PhD Candidate of the Chair of Finance!

2023-02: New publication: Arifovic, J., Hommes, C., Kopányi-Peuker, A.,  and Salle, I. (2023). Ten Isn't Large! Group Size and Coordination in a Large-Scale Experiment. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

2023-02: New publication: Ong, Q. & Qiu, J. (forthcoming). Paying for randomization and indecisiveness. Journal of Risk and Unvertainty

2023-01: New publication: Füllbrunn, S. & Vyrastekova, J. (in press). Does trust break even? A trust-game experiment with negative endowments. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics

2022-11: New publication: T. Crépellière T., and Pelster, M. and Zeisberger, S. (forthcoming). Arbitrage on the Market for Cryptocurrencies Journal of Financial Markets

2022-11: New publication: Cordes, H., Nolte, S., & Schneider, J.C. (forthcoming). Dynamics of stock market developments, financial behavior, and emotions. Journal of Banking & Finance

2022-10: New publication: Füllbrunn, S., Huber, C., Eckel, C., & Weitzel, U. (forthcoming). Heterogeneity of Beliefs and Trading Behavior - A reexamination. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis

2022-10: Sascha Füllbrunn – together with Stefan Trautmann and Wolfgang Luhan – held the conference on "Risky Decision Making for Others - Cognition, responsibility and risk preferences" – financed by Fritz Thyssen Foundation in Portsmouth.

2022-10: The Handbook of Experimental Finance, edited by Sascha Füllbrunn and Ernan Haruvy, has been published.

2022-08: We welcome Alexander Nieber as a new member and external PhD Candidate of the Chair of Finance!

2022-08: New publication: Fenneman, A., Füllbrunn, S., Goldbach, C., & Pitz, T. (forthcoming). Psychological price perception may exert a weaker effect on purchasing decisions than previously suggested: results from a large online experiment fail to reproduce either a left-digit or perceptual-fluency effect. Plos One

2022-08: New publication: Füllbrunn, S., & Neugebauer, T. (2022). Testing market regulations in experimental asset markets - The case of margin purchases. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 200, August 2022, pages 1160 - 1183

2022-08: We welcome Jorgo Goossens as a new member and Assistant Professor of the Chair of Finance!

2022-07: New publication in the Review of Financial Studies: Heeb, F., Kölbel, J.F., Paetzold, F., & Zeisberger, S. Do investors care about impact?

2022-06: New working paper: Bao, T., Füllbrunn, S., Pei, J., & Zong, J. Reading the Market? Expectation Coordination and Theory of Mind.

2022-06: New working paper: Eckel, C. Füllbrunn, S., Huber, C., & Weitzel, U. Heterogeneity of Beliefs and Trading Behavior - A reexamination.

2022-05: Sascha Füllbrunn – together with Stefan Trautmann and Wolfgang Luhan – received a grant from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation to cover travel, accommodation and catering costs for all active participants for their conference on "Risky Decision Making for Others - Cognition, responsibility and risk preferences" planned for October 2022 in Portsmouth.

2022-03: New publication: K. Fairley, J. Vyrastekova; U. Weitzel; A.G. Sanfey (2022). “Beyond lottery-evoked ambiguity aversion: the neural signature of the types and the sources of uncertainty”, Neuroimage. 251:119007 (OPEN ACCESS article)

2022-02: We are happy to announce that Jorgo Goossens will join our group later this year as a new assistant professor.

Selected Project and Impact

International Virtual Experimental Finance Workshop (vEFW)

Sascha Füllbrunn, together with Ernan Haruvy (McGill University, Montreal), hosted the first virtual Experimental Finance Workshop on November 11th and November 18th via zoom. On each day, eight speakers presented their current research projects accompanied by discussants. More than one-hundred participants each day listened to talks related to experimental finance methodology, which includes testing market anomalies, understanding trader’s and investor’s behavioural biases or testing decision models, among others.

On the first day, Martin Weber (University of Mannheim, Germany) gave the keynote on the relevance of experiments in finance.

Charles Noussair (University Arizona) held the second keynote about quantile preference together with his view on the methodology.

Sascha and Ernan used the meeting to talk about the setup of their planned Handbook of Experimental Finance. This meeting was co-presented by the hotspot Integrated Decision Making.

A third meeting was scheduled took place on January 13th 2021 with Brice Corgnet (EM-Lyin Business School) being the keynote speaker.

Collaboration with Ministry of Finance in the "Actieplan Consumentenkeuzes"

Together with researchers from the University of Zurich, European Business School, MIT Sloan School of Management, Stefan Zeisberger participated in the first round Actieplan Consumentenkeuzes. The research and impact project was further a collaboration with the European Investors (VEB). The project explored how financial consumers and impact investors perceive impact and to what extent they are willing to pay more for higher levels of impact. The project results have been presented at various academic and practitioner conferences such as the AFA Annual Meeting, GRASFI, MPI Bonn, Experimental Finance, many universities but also, on the practitioner and policy side the VEB, Dutch Banker Association, Authority for Financial Markets and many others. Together with other project about how to improve consumer choices generally, this project was part of a Kamerbrief.

It ultimately led to a publication in the Review of Financial Studies

More information on Banknieuws and Wijzer in Geldzaken

Minister of Finance delivered a research report from IMR researchers to the Tweede Kamer

The Dutch Minister of Finance Wopke Hoekstra delivered the research report “Niet-bancaire kredietverlening – een blik in de black box” by Sascha Füllbrunn, Dirk-Jan Janssen and Utz Weitzel to the Dutch House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer). The research project aimed to open the ‘black box’ of online credit provision in the Netherlands for small companies and self-employed people, for whom the consumer credit protection does not hold. The researchers analysed the web-pages of the credit providers, conducted a survey with the credit takers and the credit providers, and sent registered self-employed people to request credits from the online credit providers (Mystery Shopping).

They find the effective annual rate (jaarlijkse kostenpercentages) within a range of 8% and 421%, depending on the credit amount and duration. The relevant cost factors were often not clearly communicated such that the rates provided are still estimates for some of the credit providers. The credit takers only received detailed information after submitting personal information. Even though the credit providers advertise their background check to be quick and without the necessity to provide plenty of documents, the actual process did not always match the promise as mystery shoppers found out. However, the survey in line with earlier reports shows that the number of credit requests and credit needs was still below 25%. At the very end, those respondents requested regular bank loans often lacking further knowledge about alternative financing opportunities. 

The Dutch Ministry of Finance commissioned this project. The researchers got valuable support from the AFM, Stichting MKB Financiering, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, DYNATA, EXCAP and colleagues from the Institute for Management Research.

Read the report next to the letter of the Dutch Minister of Finance.

Experiential learning

Five new innovative education 'proeftuinen' (experimental gardens) were awarded during a festive meeting on 13 June. All the winners will start working on their project in the area of ICT in education in the new academic year. The proeftuinen are facilitated by the ICT in Education programme. One of the winners is Sascha Füllbrunn, Associate Professor of Financial Economics.

Sascha Füllbrunn will use his proeftuin for “learning by reflecting on what has been done”. In several of the courses within the Economy degree program, the influence of behavioral prejudice or literacy (financial, risk, graphical) on human decision making is discussed.

Students now learn from theories, but with his proeftuin, Füllbrunn wants to create an environment in which students can experience situations in which they are required to make decisions. Depending on the decision taken, the student will receive feedback. This confronts them with the decision-making process that is related to the theory. This way, the student will gain a better understanding of where the decision-making deviates from optimal behaviour and will hopefully experience a “Eureka! moment”.

In July 2018 the Nijmegen School of Management organized a conference on Decision Making for Others. 40 researchers from all over the world participated in a multidisciplinary exchange of ideas and experiences. The conference served as a good start to advertise the special issue on Decision Making for Others at the Journal of Economic Psychology, to be published in 2019.

More information: DMfO Conference

In June 2015 Radboud University was hosting the Experimental Finance conference in Nijmegen in cooperation with the Society for Experimental Finance. Keynote speakers were Bruno Biais and Nobel Prize winner Vernon Smith.

Older news

2021-12: We are hiring! Assistant Professor (tenure track)

2021-12: Sascha Füllbrunn's chapter for the Handbook of Experimental Finance together with Christoph Huber and Christian König-Kersting on Experimental Finance and Financial Professionals is available at SSRN (link).

2021-11: The first chapters for the Handbook of Experimental Finance edited by Sascha Füllbrunn and Ernan Haruvy are available as pre-print. Find a list of some chapters here. Among those is as well Sascha’s chapter on Decision Making for Others with Ola Kvaløy, and Wolfgang Luhan: "Investing other People’s Money" Pre-print available here

2021-11: The #fincap project's paper "Non-Standard Errors", with Utz Weitzel in the project team and Sascha Füllbrunn, Sven Nolte, and Stefan Zeisberger as members of research teams, has been released at SSRN (link). 

2021-11: The healthy brain project paper "Rationale and design of the Healthy Brain Study: an accessible resource for understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context", with Sascha Füllbrunn in the project team, has been accepted at PlosONE (link to pre-print).

2021-11: New working paper: Füllbrunn, S., & Vyratekova, J.: "Trust under financial distress - An experimental study"

2021-10: New publication in the Review of Financial Studies: Bose, D., Cordes, H., Nolte, S., Schneider, J., Camerer, C.: "Decision Weights for Experimental Asset Prices based on Visual Salience"

2021-09: New publication in the Journal of Banking & Finance: Borsboom, C., Janssen, D.-J., Strucks, M., Zeisberger, S.: "History Matters: How Short-Term Price Charts Hurt Investment Performance"

2021-08: New publication in the Journal of Risk & Uncertainty: Zeisberger, S.: "Do people care about loss probabilities?"

2021-08: New working paper: Borsboom, C., Duxbury, D., & Zeisberger, S.: "Domain-dependent diversification: The influence of gain-loss domain and information aggregation on correlation choice"

2021-08: New working paper: Borsboom, C. & Füllbrunn, S.: "Stock Price Level Effect"

2021-08: We welcome Benjamin Hiepler as PhD student and junior lecturer and Bob Zoutenbier as junior lecturer at the Chair of Finance!

2021-08: Sascha Füllbrunn and Wolfgang Luhan successfully applied for an Economics Science Association session at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) in Boston 2022 (January 7-9). The speakers are Ciril Bosch-Rosa, Matteo Ploner, Homa Zarghamee, Sandro Ambuehl and Sascha Füllbrunn. The discussants are Georgia Buckle, Bernhard Ganglemair, John Ifcher, Levent Neyse, and Stefan Trautmann. Stefan Zeisberger got a paper presentation accepted.

2021-07: New Working paper: Kopányi-Peuker, A., & Weber, M.: "The Role of the End Time in Experimental Asset Markets"

2021-05: New working paper: Hoyer, K., Breugelman, S., Zeelenberg, M. & Zeisberger, S.: "A Culture of Greed: Bubble Formation in Experimental Asset Markets with Greedy and Non-Greedy Traders"

2021-02: We welcome Anita Kopányi-Peuker as a new member and Assistant Professor of the Chair of Finance!

2021-01: New publication: Hoyer, K., Zeisberger, S., Breugelmans, S., & Zeelenberg, M.: "Greed and Individual Trading Behavior in Experimental Asset Markets", Decision 

2021-01: New publication: Lange, A., Schmitz, J., & Schwirplies, C.  "Inequality, role reversal and cooperation in multiple group membership settings" Experimental Economics

2021-01: Sascha Füllbrunn, together with Ernan Haruvy, host a virtual Experimental Finance Workshop on January 13. For more information see www.ru.nl/imr/vefw3.

2020-11: New publication: Buckle, G.E., Füllbrunn, S.C. & Luhan, W.J.: Lying for Others: The Impact of Agency on Misreporting. Economics Letters

2020-10: Dutch Minister of Finance Wopke Hoekstra delivered the research report “Niet-bancaire kredietverlening – een blik in de black box” by Sascha Füllbrunn, Dirk-Jan Janssen and Utz Weitzel to the Dutch House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer). For more information see below.

2020-10: We are hiring! We seek applications for a tenure-track position in finance. Deadline: 15 November 2020

2020-10: Sascha Füllbrunn, together with Ernan Haruvy,  host a virtual Experimental Finance workshop

2020-09: New publication: Füllbrunn, S. & Neugebauer, T.: "Testing market regulations in experimental asset markets - the case of margin purchases" Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 

2020-09: Two new publications in Energy Policy by Jan Schmitz. See publications site.

2020-06: New solo-authored publication by Jan Schmitz in Management Science: Is Charitable Giving a Zero Sum Game?-The Effect of Competition Between Charities on Giving Behavior.

2020-03: Journal of Economic Psychology's special issue Decision Making for Others is published, edited by Sascha Füllbrunn, Wolfgang Luhan and Alan Sanfey.

2020-01: Sascha Füllbrunn, Dirk-Jan Janssen, and Utz Weitzel started the research project on alternative financing opportunities for small companies using a multiple methods approach including different data generation procedures, web-research, and interviews. The project is initiated upon request from the Ministry of Finance.

2020-01: New publication: Füllbrunn, S., Luhan, W. & Sanfey, A. (2020). Current Issues in Decision Making for Others. Journal of Economic Psychology

2019-12: New publication: Füllbrunn, S., Nicklisch, A. & Neugebauer, T. (2019). Underpricing of initial public offerings in experimental asset markets. Experimental Economics

2019-11: New publication: Ghesla, C., Grieder, M., Schmitz, J., & Stadelmann, M. (2020). Pro-Environmental Incentives and Loss Aversion: A Field Experiment on Electricity Saving Behavior. Energy Policy

2019-11: New publication: Borsboom, C. & Zeisberger, S. (2020). What makes an investment risky? An analysis of price path characteristics. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 

2019-10: We welcome Jan Schmitz as new assistant professor in our team!

2019-10: New publication: Holzmeister, F., Huber, J., Kirchler, M., Lindner, F., Weitzel, U. & Zeisberger, S. (forthcoming). What Drives Risk Perception? A Global Survey with Financial Professionals and Lay People, Management Science

2019-10: New publication: Janssen, D.-J., Füllbrunn, S. & Weitzel, U. (2019). Individual Speculative Behavior and Overpricing in Experimental Asset Markets. Experimental Economics

2019-09: In an 'experimental garden' session at Radboud University, Sascha Füllbrunn will let students experience how decision-making processes in practice often deviate from theory and why this is the case. More information here.

2019-09: New publication: Huber, J., Palan, S., Zeisberger, S. (2019). Does Investor Risk Perception Drive Asset Prices in Markets? Experimental Evidence. Journal of Banking & Finance