The demand for structured products: an experimental approach

Abstract

Structured investment funds showed an important growth in the mutual fund industry. We analyze this type of fund’s demand using the experimental methodology which gives us perfect control over the characteristics of the funds and the information provided to the investor. Different types of structured guaranteed funds, with fixed combinations of secured and additional benefits, are sequentially offered to university students who act as investors. Subjects also have the alternative possibility to buy bonds. Our results show that information available to investors, and particularly the order in which this information is presented, generates significant biases in their decision making which can have both positive and negative consequences on their financial behavior. In fact, when the investment alternatives are made easier to compare, too good to be true investment offers get more easily spotted, whereas funds whose performance shows an apparently positive trend result overvalued in comparison to bonds.

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