Petra Vokata

Petra Vokata holds a PhD in Finance from Aalto University School of Business. During her PhD, she was a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley (2017, 2018). She joined the Finance group at Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, in June 2019.

Her research interests include household finance, financial innovation, and asset pricing. She teaches Investments to Fisher undergraduate students.

Contact information

Assistant Professor, Ohio State University

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Consumer Behavior in Financial Markets 2020 “Exploited by Complexity” Cameron Peng. Discussant: Petra Vokata

Over the last decade or so, more than a trillion dollars of structural financial products have been sold to households. Despite their popularity, there are two opposing views when it comes to the underlying motives for issuing these products. The traditional view suggests that they are issued for risk-sharing purposes. A more recent view, however, suggests that they are issued to exploit naive investors via complexity. Empirically, there is growing evidence for the exploitation-based view. Hear speaker Cameron Peng present the key findings from their paper and features about complex financial securities; the heterogeneous effects they have on investment performance and their redistributional purposes, followed by discussant Petra Vokata.