The Ostrich in Us: Selective Attention to Financial Accounts, Income, Spending, and Liquidity

Division of Economics and Finance, Columbia Business School, NBER, & CEPR. mpagel@columbia.edu We thank Alex Imas, Ted O’Donoghue, Jon Parker, John Driscoll, Nachum Sicherman, Inessa Liskovich, Paul Heidhues, Michael Grubb, Laura Veldkamp, Paul Tetlock, Nicola Gennaioli, Botond Koszegi, Daniel Gottlieb, Cary Friedman, Benjamin Keys, Constança Esteves-Sorenson, Silvia Saccardo, Matthew Rabin, David Laibson, Paige Skiba, Devin Pope, Vicki Bogan, Valentin Haddad, Marina Niessner, Andrea Prat, and conference and seminar participants at Cornell, Maryland, 2017 BEAM at Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, NBER Asset Pricing Meeting, NBER Digitization Summer Institute, University of Amsterdam, AFA, ECWFC at the WFA, EFA, NYU, Columbia, TAU Finance, ESSFM Gerzensee, University of Zurich, Indiana University, University of Innsbruck, University of Melbourne, and the National University of Singapore for a range of insightful comments. This project has received funding from Danish Council for Independent Research, under grant agreement no 6165-00020. We are indebted to Meniga and their data analysts for providing and helping with the data. We also thank Fedra De Angelis Effrem and Andrea Marogg for outstanding research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• October 17, 2017