Behavioral Biases and Investment

We investigate the way investors react to prior gains/losses. We directly examine investor reactions to different definitions of gains and losses (i.e., overall wealth, paper gains and losses, and realized capital gains and losses) and investigate how gains and losses in one category of wealth (e.g., real estate) affect holdings in other categories (e.g., financial assets). We show that investors change their holdings of risky assets as a function of both financial and real estate gains. Prior gains increase risk-taking, while prior losses reduce it. To interpret our results, we consider and compare three alternative hypotheses of investor behavior: prospect theory, house money effect and standard utility theory with decreasing risk aversion. Our evidence fails to support loss aversion, pointing in the direction of the house money effect or standard utility theory. Investors consider wealth in its entirety, and risk-taking in financial markets is affected by gains/losses in overall wealth, financial wealth, and real estate wealth. We appreciate the helpful comments of: O. Bondarenko, F. De Jong, B. Dumas, H. Hau, P. Hillion, R. Jaganathan, M. Lettau, P.Maenhout, M. Huang, S. Mullanaithen, T. Odean, J. Peress, R. Shiller, P. Sodini, M. Suominen, A. Subrahmanyan, B. Swaminathan, R. Thaler, L. Tepla, P. Veronesi, M. Weber and the participants of the Summer Financial Markets Symposium at Gerzensee and the NBER Behavioral Finance Meeting, Fall 2002. We are grateful to Sven-Ivan Sundqvist for numerous helpful discussions and for providing us with the data. Financial support from Inquiry Europe is acknowledged. Andrei Simonov also acknowledges financial support from the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation. Any remaining errors are our own.     

EQUITY FLOTATION COST IN PUBLIC UTILITY RATE REGULATION

Based upon Myers (1974) adjusted net present value model, this paper develops a financial valuation framework to account for flotation costs in the utility's rate determination process. The zero adjusted net present value criterion established in the paper is used as a basis in measuring the 'fair' returns to the utility. It is demonstrated that both the Arzac-Marcus (1981) and the conventional flotation cost adjustment formulas maintain the utility shareholders' wealth. However, the Arzac-Marcus formula fails to charge the utility customers properly across time while the conventional approach preserves the 'fair' pricing of the utility services to the customers.     

Time to wealth goals in capital accumulation

This paper considers the problem of investment of capital in risky assets in a dynamic capital market in continuous time. The model controls risk, and in particular the risk associated with errors in the estimation of asset returns. The framework for investment risk is a geometric Brownian motion model for asset prices, with random rates of return. The information filtration process and the capital allocation decisions are considered separately. The filtration is based on a Bayesian model for asset prices, and an (empirical) Bayes estimator for current price dynamics is developed from the price history. Given the conditional price dynamics, investors allocate wealth to achieve their financial goals efficiently over time. The price updating and wealth reallocations occur when control limits on the wealth process are attained. A Bayesian fractional Kelly strategy is optimal at each rebalancing, assuming that the risky assets are jointly lognormal distributed. The strategy minimizes the expected time to the upper wealth limit while maintaining a high probability of reaching that goal before falling to a lower wealth limit. The fractional Kelly strategy is a blend of the log-optimal portfolio and cash and is equivalently represented by a negative power utility function, under the multivariate lognormal distribution assumption. By rebalancing when control limits are reached, the wealth goals approach provides greater control over downside risk and upside growth. The wealth goals approach with random rebalancing times is compared to the expected utility approach with fixed rebalancing times in an asset allocation problem involving stocks, bonds, and cash.     

Consensus Beliefs Equilibrium and Market Efficiency

This paper presents an analysis of the concept of consensus beliefs and its relation to market efficiency. We show that unless traders have rational expectations, the two published interpretations of consensus beliefs are not useful for considerations of market efficiency. One interpretation (see Verrecchia 6 ) has no implication for market efficiency. Under the second interpretation (see Verrecchia 7 , 8 ) consensus beliefs equilibria are efficient, but they typically do not exist unless traders have rational expectations.     

Discretionary Disclosure: A Note

This article extends the models of discretionary disclosure. The level of disclosure will be affected by the costs of such disclosure. Verrecchia (1983) shows that when the cost of disclosure is fixed then the threshold level of disclosure is positively related to that cost. Verrecchia (1990a) shows that in the presence of fixed disclosure costs the threshold level of disclosure is negatively related to the quality of information (precision) to be disclosed. The intuition for the result is that as information is more precise, withholding it is more detrimental for the firm and hence the threshold for disclosure is lowered. The model here expands the cost of disclosure to be a function of information quality. When this is the case, the Verrecchia (1990a) unambiguous result does not hold. The presence of information quality in the cost function creates a countervailing force such that more precise information does not necessarily imply more disclosure. This creates the intuitive result that precise information of a proprietary nature might be withheld from the market.     

Effects of prior voluntary disclosure on earnings announcements in an environment with low information and regulation

This study examines the association between levels of annual report voluntary disclosure and the market reaction to the next interim earnings announcement in a market with both low regulation and analyst following. We examine the first order effects of voluntary disclosure by using direct measures for both the level of voluntary disclosure, and the market effects of such disclosure. The results show that preannouncement voluntary disclosure significantly reduces the price and volume reactions in the earnings announcement period, and is consistent with the Kim and Verrecchia (1991a) framework and the Atiase and Bamber (1994) empirical findings. We extend the analysis to investigate trading behavior during the earnings announcement period, and observe the trading behavior predicted by Kim and Verrecchia (1991b, 1994). We conclude that voluntary disclosure in annual reports can be regarded as an important determinant of preannouncement information precision in markets with low regulation and analyst following, and observe the expected trading behavior as modeled in Kim and Verrecchia (1991a), and extended in Kim and Verrecchia (1991b, 1994).     

Portfolio Optimization in Discontinuous Markets under Incomplete Information

We consider the problem of maximization of expected utility from terminal wealth for log and power utility functions in a market model that leads to purely discontinuous processes. We study this problem as a stochastic control problem both under complete as well as incomplete information. Our contribution consists in showing that the optimal strategy can be obtained by solving a system of equations that in some cases is linear and that a certainty equivalence property holds not only for log-utility but also for a power utility function. For the case of a power utility under incomplete information we also present an independent direct approach based on a Zakai-type equation.      

The econometrics of efficient portfolios

It is well known that the standard mean variance approach can be inappropriate when return distributions feature skewness, fat tails or multimodes. This is typically the situation for portfolios including derivatives. In this case, it can be necessary to come back to the basic expected utility approach. In this paper, an efficient portfolio maximizes the expected utility of future wealth. This paper presents an analysis of the efficiency frontier, formed by a set of efficient portfolios corresponding to a parameterized class of utility functions. First, we discuss the estimation of an efficient portfolio and introduce several tests of the efficiency hypothesis, depending on what is known about the utility function and the budget level. Next we analyse the shape of the frontier and develop a procedure for testing the separability of the efficiency frontier into K independent funds. The inference is semi-nonparametric because the return distribution is left unspecified. We illustrate our approach by an application to portfolios including derivatives.     

Utility Functions

Abstract

This article is a self-contained survey of utility functions and some of their applications. Throughout the paper the theory is illustrated by three examples: exponential utility functions, power utility functions of the first kind (such as quadratic utility functions), and power utility functions of the second kind (such as the logarithmic utility function). The postulate of equivalent expected utility can be used to replace a random gain by a fixed amount and to determine a fair premium for claims to be insured, even if the insurer’s wealth without the new contract is a random variable itself. Then n companies (or economic agents) with random wealth are considered. They are interested in exchanging wealth to improve their expected utility. The family of Pareto optimal risk exchanges is characterized by the theorem of Borch. Two specific solutions are proposed. The first, believed to be new, is based on the synergy potential; this is the largest amount that can be withdrawn from the system without hurting any company in terms of expected utility. The second is the economic equilibrium originally proposed by Borch. As by-products, the option-pricing formula of Black-Scholes can be derived and the Esscher method of option pricing can be explained.     

Bridging the Information Gap: Quarterly Conference Calls as a Medium for Voluntary Disclosure

This paper uses the quarterly conference call as a disclosure metric to examine whether firms with less informative financial statements are more likely to respond by providing additional voluntary disclosure. After controlling for other characteristics of a firm's information environment, I find a significant inverse relation between measures of the informativeness of a firm's financial statements and the likelihood that the firm will use a quarterly conference call. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis in Verrecchia (1990) that the probability of disclosure of management's private information is negatively related to the precision of prior public information on firm value.     

Wealth portfolios and elite professional athletes

Defined contribution pension plans typically rely on some type of lifecycle allocation investment strategy. This approach has recently been shown to be sub-optimal due to the portfolio size effect. The terminal wealth of individuals with steadily increasing earnings over time is significantly less when using a lifecycle strategy compared with a simple contrarian approach. The adverse effect of an inappropriate asset allocation strategy for investors with unorthodox earnings profiles, such as for professional athletes, can be greatly magnified. We demonstrate that strategies that exploit the portfolio size effect vastly dominates terminal wealth earned using lifecycle strategies for individuals who experience unorthodox earning profiles, particularly those generating high investable incomes early in life. While the lifecycle strategy contains some attractive features relating to risk aversion and diminishing utility from wealth, we demonstrate that for unorthodox earnings profiles the case for taking advantage of the portfolio size effect is particularly strong.     

Optimal capital growth with convex shortfall penalties

The optimal capital growth strategy or Kelly strategy has many desirable properties such as maximizing the asymptotic long-run growth of capital. However, it has considerable short-run risk since the utility is logarithmic, with essentially zero Arrow–Pratt risk aversion. It is common to control risk with a Value-at-Risk (VaR) constraint defined on the end of horizon wealth. A more effective approach is to impose a VaR constraint at each time on the wealth path. In this paper, we provide a method to obtain the maximum growth while staying above an ex-ante discrete time wealth path with high probability, where shortfalls below the path are penalized with a convex function of the shortfall. The effect of the path VaR condition and shortfall penalties is a lower growth rate than the Kelly strategy, but the downside risk is under control. The asset price dynamics are defined by a model with Markov transitions between several market regimes and geometric Brownian motion for prices within a regime. The stochastic investment model is reformulated as a deterministic programme which allows the calculation of the optimal constrained growth wagers at discrete points in time.     

The relationship between expected utility and higher moments for distributions captured by the Gram–Charlier class

In this letter we derive the closed form solution for expected utility in terms of higher moments of the distribution of wealth when expected utility takes the CARA form and the distribution of wealth is captured by the Gram–Charlier class of distributions. We derive the condition under which positive skewness can be associated with a decrease in expected utility.     

Portfolio optimization under model uncertainty and BSDE games

We consider robust optimal portfolio problems for markets modeled by (possibly non-Markovian) Itô–Lévy processes. Mathematically, the situation can be described as a stochastic differential game, where one of the players (the agent) is trying to find the portfolio that maximizes the utility of her terminal wealth, while the other player (“the market”) is controlling some of the unknown parameters of the market (e.g., the underlying probability measure, representing a model uncertainty problem) and is trying to minimize this maximal utility of the agent. This leads to a worst case scenario control problem for the agent. In the Markovian case, such problems can be studied using the Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman–Isaacs (HJBI) equation, but these methods do not work in the non-Markovian case. We approach the problem by transforming it into a stochastic differential game for backward stochastic differential equations (a BSDE game). Using comparison theorems for BSDEs with jumps we arrive at criteria for the solution of such games in the form of a kind of non-Markovian analogue of the HJBI equation. The results are illustrated by examples.     

Optimal Insurance Under the Insurer's VaR Constraint

In this paper, we impose the insurer's Value at Risk (VaR) constraint on Arrow's optimal insurance model. The insured aims to maximize his expected utility of terminal wealth, under the constraint that the insurer wishes to control the VaR of his terminal wealth to be maintained below a prespecified level. It is shown that when the insurer's VaR constraint is binding, the solution to the problem is not linear, but piecewise linear deductible, and the insured's optimal expected utility will increase as the insurer becomes more risk-tolerant. Basak and Shapiro (2001) showed that VaR risk managers often choose larger risk exposures to risky assets. We draw a similar conclusion in this paper. It is shown that when the insured has an exponential utility function, optimal insurance based on VaR constraint causes the insurer to suffer larger losses than optimal insurance without insurer's risk constraint.     

Background Risk, Demand for Insurance, and Choquet Expected Utility Preferences

This article deals with demand for insurance with a background risk in a nonprobabilized uncertainty framework, where preferences are represented by a nonadditive model of decision making. The Choquet expected utility model that we use generalizes expected utility and allows for a separation of the attitude towards uncertainty and the attitude towards wealth. When the insurable and the background risk are comonotone, the impact of the background risk on the demand for insurance is related to the attitude towards wealth. In contrast, when the two risks are anticomonotone, the attitude towards uncertainty is determinant. In this case, some of the resulting behaviors cannot be explained by the standard expected utility model.     

产品市场势力、公司治理与股票市场流动性

本文实证研究了我国股票市场的流动性问题。结果表明,产品市场势力能够促进信息传递,提高股票的流动性。这种影响即使控制了公司治理因素依然显著,同时随着信息不对称程度的提高而更为明显。另外,在对股票流动性的影响上,产品市场势力与董事会规模、高管薪酬激励之间存在替代关系。同时,股权分散能增强产品市场势力的影响,但是产品市场势力会削弱股权分散的积极作用。     

Liquidity Risk and the Dynamics of Arbitrage Capital

We develop a continuous‐time model of liquidity provision in which hedgers can trade multiple risky assets with arbitrageurs. Arbitrageurs have constant relative risk‐aversion (CRRA) utility, while hedgers' asset demand is independent of wealth. An increase in hedgers' risk aversion can make arbitrageurs endogenously more risk‐averse. Because arbitrageurs generate endogenous risk, an increase in their wealth or a reduction in their CRRA coefficient can raise risk premia despite Sharpe ratios declining. Arbitrageur wealth is a priced risk factor because assets held by arbitrageurs offer high expected returns but suffer the most when wealth drops. Aggregate illiquidity, which declines in wealth, captures that factor.     

Investment decisions when utility depends on wealth and other attributes

The problem of optimal investment under a multivariate utility function allows for an investor to obtain utility not only from wealth, but other (possibly correlated) attributes. In this paper we implement multivariate mixtures of exponential (mixex) utility to address this problem. These utility functions allow for stochastic risk aversions to differing states of the world. We derive some new results for certainty equivalence in this context. By specifying different distributions for stochastic risk aversions, we are able to derive many known, plus several new utility functions, including models of conditional certainty equivalence and multivariate generalisations of HARA utility, which we call dependent HARA utility. Focusing on the case of asset returns and attributes being multivariate normal, we optimise the asset portfolio, and find that the optimal portfolio consists of the Markowitz portfolio and hedging portfolios. We provide an empirical illustration for an investor with a mixex utility function of wealth and sentiment.     

Threshold citation analysis of influential articles,journals, institutions and researchers in accounting

We use a threshold citation approach to measure the influence of articles, journals, institutions and researchers in accounting research. The Journal of Accounting Research, the Journal of Accounting and Economics and Accounting Review are the 3 most influential journals in accounting research. The 3 most influential institutions in accounting research are the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan, while the 3 most frequently cited authors in accounting research are Richard G. Sloan, Robert E. Verrecchia and Paul M. Healy.