Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/215093 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 8091
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
Attention utility is the hedonic pleasure or pain derived purely from paying attention to information. Using data on brokerage account logins by individual investors, we show that individuals devote disproportionate attention to already-known positive information about the performance of individual stocks within their portfolios. This aversion to paying attention to unfavorable information, through its effect on logins, has consequences for trading activity; it reduces trading after recent losses and increases trading after recent gains. Attention utility is distinct from models of belief-based utility and information aversion (in which information not sought is not fully known), and implies that the pleasure and pain of attending to known information may be important for individual behavior.
Subjects: 
information utility
attention
login
investor behavior
JEL: 
G40
G41
D14
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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