TY  - JOUR
AU  - Choi,James J.
AU  - Laibson,David
AU  - Madrian,Brigitte C.
TI  - The Flypaper Effect in Individual Investor Asset Allocation
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13656
PY  - 2007
Y2  - November 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13656
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13656.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James J. Choi
Yale School of Management
135 Prospect Street
P.O. Box 208200
New Haven, CT 06520-8200
E-Mail: james.choi@yale.edu

David Laibson
Department of Economics
Littauer M-12
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/496-3402
Fax: 617/495-8570
E-Mail: dlaibson@harvard.edu

Brigitte C. Madrian
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617-495-8917
Fax: 617-496-5960
E-Mail: Brigitte_Madrian@Harvard.edu
AB  - We document a flypaper effect in asset allocation: securities received in kind "stick where they hit." We study a firm that twice changed the rules governing the securities in which its 401(k) matching contributions were initially invested. Both of these rule changes were economically neutral: employees were always free to immediately reallocate their match account balances. However, we find that most employees neither reallocate their match balances, nor offset employer-initiated changes in the match allocation by adjusting the allocation of their own contributions. Consequently, these rule changes caused dramatic shifts in participants' 401(k) portfolio risk. After examining several alternative explanations for this flypaper effect, we conclude that it is largely due to a combination of passivity and mental accounting.
ER  -