Financial disclosure documents provide investors with product details to facilitate informed investment decisions. We investigate whether the appearance -the visual frame -of disclosure documents impacts risk and return expectations and investment behavior. In our experiment, subjects decide about investments into real-life mutual funds. We find that subjects expect a smaller return variance, invest more and gather less correct information if visual distractors are present in the visual frame.

more »

... esults are in line with the distracted attention mechanism and suggest that disclosure policies should take the visual frame into account. JEL classification: C91, D03, D14, D18, D84