Endowment Effects in the Field: Evidence from India's IPO Lotteries
Winners of randomly assigned initial public offering (IPO) lottery shares are significantly more likely to hold these shares than lottery losers 1, 6, and even 24 months after the random allocation. This finding persists in samples of highly active investors, suggesting along with additional evidence that this "endowment effect" is not driven by inertia alone. The effect decreases as experience in the IPO market increases, but remains even for very experienced investors. These results provide field evidence derived from the behavior of 1.5 million Indian stock investors consistent with the laboratory literature that documents endowment effects for risky gambles.