Asset pricing and downside risk in the Australian share market

As downside risk has been identified as a separate risk exposure to investors, we investigate whether downside beta and co-skewness exposure impact on the return to investors in Australian equities. Although considered as a developed market, the Australian Securities Exchange merits separate investigation, as it is small and concentrated on some sectors, when compared with the major developed markets. As realized returns are a proxy for expected returns, we separately examine conditional returns in upturn and downturn periods. We find that both downside risks are separately priced by investors, and that our results are unaffected by the inclusion of a range of company characteristics. We subsequently confirm that returns to each downside risk are not related. In robustness tests, we conclude that the return to downside risk cannot be explained by a size, a value, or a momentum premium. Although it also has explanatory power, the inclusion of a leverage factor also does not reduce the explanatory power of downside risk.     

Mean-semivariance behavior: Downside risk and capital asset pricing

For over 30 years academics and practitioners have been debating the merits of the CAPM. One of the characteristics of this model is that it measures risk by beta, which follows from an equilibrium in which investors display mean-variance behavior. In that framework, risk is assessed by the variance of returns, a questionable and restrictive measure of risk. The semivariance of returns is a more plausible measure of risk and can be used to generate an alternative behavioral hypothesis, mean-semivariance behavior; an alternative measure of risk for diversified investors, the downside beta; and an alternative pricing model based on this downside beta. The empirical evidence discussed in this article for the entire MSCI database of developed and emerging markets clearly supports the downside beta and the pricing model based on it over beta and the CAPM.     

Individual Characteristics and the Disposition Effect: The Opposing Effects of Confidence and Self-Regard

We conduct two experiments to examine potential causes of the disposition effect. In Experiment 1, we rule out beliefs in mean reversion as a cause of the disposition effect. Although a belief in the mean reversion of stock prices should be independent of whether an investor owns or only follows the stock, we show only investors who own the stock behave as though prices will reverse. In Experiment 2, participants buy and sell securities over multiple periods. We find that self-regard and investing confidence (two types of self-esteem) have opposing influences on investors’ tendency to hold losing investments. Investors with lower self-regard hold losing investments longer than those with higher self-regard, and investors with higher confidence hold losing investments longer than those with lower confidence. We focus on investors’ tendency to hold losing stocks too long because prior research suggests the gain versus loss sides of the disposition effect are driven by different biases.     

工程项目主体行为风险研究

项目主体行为风险是指由于主体的特定行为而给项目造成损失的可能性.长期以来风险管理比较重视客观事件风险,计算风险发生的概率和可能损失,很少注重主体行为风险的影响作用.而项目工程风险产生的根源往往是由项目主体行为所引起的.同时,项目利益相关人对项目的期望值和价值观很大程度上决定了项目的成败.论文从利益相关人角度,提出了工程项目主体行为风险研究的理论框架和实践意义,对工程项目主体行为风险进行分类、识别和评价,并提出针对性的风险管理响应措施.     

Poverty and probability: aspiration and aversion to compound lotteries in El Salvador and India

Some experimental participants are averse to compound lotteries: they prefer simple lotteries that depend on only one random event, even when the simple lotteries offer lower expected value. This paper proposes that many behavioral “investments” represent more compound risk for poorer people—who often face multiple dimensions of deprivation—than for richer people. As a result, identical aversion to compound lotteries can prevent investment among poorer people, but have no effect on richer people. The paper reports five studies: two initial studies that document that aversion to compound lotteries operates as an economic preference, two “laboratory experiments in the field” in El Salvador, and one Internet survey experiment in India. Poorer Salvadoran women who choose a compound lottery are 27 percentage points more likely to have found formal employment than those who chose a simple lottery, but lottery choice is unrelated to employment for richer women. Poorer students at the national Salvadoran university choose more compound lotteries than richer students, on average, implying that aversion to compound lotteries screened out poorer aspirants but not richer ones. Poorer and lower-caste Indian participants who choose compound lotteries are more likely than those who choose simple lotteries to have a different occupation than their parents, which is not the case for better-off participants. These findings suggest that the consequences of aversion to compound lotteries are different in the context of poverty and disadvantage.     

Accruals quality,managers’ incentives and stock market reaction: evidence from Europe

We investigate if accruals quality is a valuable indicator of earnings quality for stock market investors. Our particular focus is on the incremental informative value of taking into account managers’ incentives for using accruals. We propose a market-based approach for assessing the usefulness of this indicator to improve investors’ decisions. Specifically, we examine the association between accruals quality and information asymmetry among stock market participants. Our empirical study uses data on European firms and our results are consistent with a positive association between poor earnings quality and high information asymmetry. However, given some previous studies suggesting that accruals-based measures may be noisy indicators of earnings quality, we develop a method to increase the informational content of the accruals quality measure. Based on our results, we find that combining accruals quality with the dispersion in analysts’ forecasts provides a better indicator of earnings quality rather than only accruals quality.     

Living with ambiguity: prices and survival when investors have heterogeneous preferences for ambiguity

This paper investigates asset prices and the long run wealth of investors in an asset market populated by investors who have heterogeneous preferences over risk and ambiguity. In a dynamic setting I characterize conditions under which investors who are averse to ambiguity will have an effect on long run asset prices. If ambiguity averse investors always believe that the true distribution could be wrong in many possible directions then a necessary condition for their survival is that the market exhibit no aggregate risk, a condition not met by many asset pricing models of interest. However, unlike investors with irrational beliefs, there do exist markets in which ambiguity averse investors survive. I have greatly benefitted from conversations with David Easley, Karl Shell, Ani Guerdjikova, Val Lambson, Kristian Rydqvist, Liyan Yang, Josh Teitelbaum and Jayant Ganguli as well as seminar participants at Cornell University and the Midwest Economic Theory Meetings. I am grateful to the Solomon Fund for Decision Research at Cornell University for support.     

Financial Analysts,Firm Quality,and Social Responsibility

We suggest that financial analysts have an incentive to follow the stocks of socially responsible companies, because such stocks meet the growing demands and psychology of the investment community, who want to combine the usual investment goals with social responsibility. Socially responsible investors prefer to hold stocks of companies they perceive as socially responsible or of high quality. Financial analysts then help brokers' marketing efforts by supplying investors with more analysis for stocks of socially responsible or high-quality companies. Using scores from Fortune surveys on perceptions of community and environmental responsibility as a measure of social responsibility and Fortune survey measures of quality as a measure of company quality, we find evidence that stocks of socially responsible and high-quality companies are indeed followed by more financial analysts. The positive relationship among social responsibility, company quality, and analyst following remains significant even after controlling for the effects on analyst following of firm size, share price, the volatility of stock returns, and market-to-book value of equity.     

Greater prudence and greater downside risk aversion

Variation in the degree of downside risk aversion across decision makers has implications for efficient risk sharing. However, except for small differences in risk preferences, there is no index, analogous to the Arrow-Pratt index of risk aversion, that depends only on local properties of the utility function and indicates the degree of aversion to downside risk. A measure that does depend only on local properties of the utility function u, the index of prudence p=−u^?/u^″, is related to downside risk aversion, which is indicated by a positive value for u^?. Although we show that the degree of prudence is not an accurate indicator of the degree of downside risk aversion, we nonetheless demonstrate that a uniform increase in prudence accompanied by a uniform increase (decrease) in risk aversion is sufficient to indicate greater downside risk aversion, provided prudence is greater (less) than three times the degree of risk aversion.     

Assessing downside and upside risk spillovers across conventional and socially responsible stock markets

Since the aftermath of the recent global financial crisis, socially responsible (SR) investments have become an alternative form of conventional finance, giving rise to further systemic risk between conventional and SR stock markets. In this paper, we assess this risk transmission using Value at Risk (VaR) modeling for the US, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, over the period covering January 2004–December 2016. We find that socially responsible stock markets exhibit less risk than do conventional markets in terms of the risk hedging properties induced by the SR screening. Second, contributions to systemic risk vary across market phases and return distribution levels, with a larger contribution and spillover effect during the recent global financial crisis. For example, at the downside of the distribution (CoVaR at 5%), the conventional European index shows the highest contribution to the world market’s systemic risk, while the US stock market shows the highest contribution at the upside of the distribution (CoVaR at 95%). This finding is justified by the difference in the risk aversion of investors that varies with the market state as well as the disparities in the development of SR markets.     

The Influence of Gender on the Perception and Response to Investment Risk: The Case of Professional Investors

In a previous issue of this journal, O'Barr and Conley, noted that cultural differences caused public pension fund managers to invest differently and more conservatively than their private fund counterparts. An additional insight to is that cultural factors have a non-trivial affect on how assets are managed. This article continues with this theme and suggests that, even with equivalent training, experience and information, investment managers make different decisions based on identifiable cultural differences. This study focuses on professional men and women investment managers who perceive and respond to risk differently. This supports O'Barr and Conley, suggesting cultural factors may be responsible for this risk related gender effect.

There is extensive evidence that when faced with social and technological hazards, women are more risk averse than men. This appears to be so even when decision-makers of both genders have the same level of expertise and experience. In the investment realm, non-professional women investors also appear to accept less risk than their male counterparts, after controlling for factors such as age, education, wealth and experience. Although the precise reason for this gender difference in risk taking is unknown, it appears to be related to evolutionary and social factors.

This paper is unique in that it investigates the risk/gender difference for professionally trained investors. It is found that women investors weight risk attributes, such as possibility of loss and ambiguity, more heavily than their male colleagues. In addition, women tend to emphasize risk reduction more than men in portfolio construction. While gender differences appear to influence perceptions of risk and recommendations to clients, these differences tend to be the most significant for assets and portfolios at risk extremes.     

The capital asset pricing model in economic perspective

The capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is theoretically incomplete in its demand-side focus, risk-averse investors and internally inconsistent homogeneous beliefs; is not conclusively supported empirically; and yet it legitimizes a notion that investors can earn higher returns by bearing undiversifiable risk. Our article does not merely extend the CAPM with more realistic assumptions, it completes its original framework by including (1) risk-taking investors in the investor population, (2) investors who can have heterogeneous expectations or beliefs – an overlooked but required condition for the CAPM to be an internally consistent and meaningful model of competitive financial asset pricing under uncertainty and (3) a positive-sloped short-run supply curve based on a reasonable interpretation of the nature of financial asset trade. Upon a complete economic interpretation, it is shown that the equilibrium (systematic) risk-rate of return relationship depends on whose aggregate trading activity dominates, risk-averse or risk-taking investors’. There is no universal, or even general, positive relationship between systematic risk and rate of return. This has far-reaching implications for investors and investment advisors who serve them.     

To what extent do network effects moderate the relationship between social media propagated news and investors’ perceptions?

As a prominent social media tool, Twitter enables prompt dissemination of financial news and information, which can have a substantial impact on investors’ perceptions and decision-making processes. The propagation of financial news and information through Twitter can either positively or negatively affect investors’ perceptions. As per network theory, the impact of information on one's perception and behavior is known as the network effect. Since Twitter is also a network, we tried to contribute more to this theory in this study by considering other factors that can have an impact on the perceptions of investors. We argue that the impact of financial information and news on investors’ perceptions is moderated by other factors such as connectivity, social ties, and network size of the network. To establish the links between them, we considered three key factors in investors’ networks: (1) network connectivity (network structure); (2) social ties circle (friends, family, colleagues); and (3) size of the network (number of contacts). The results of this study indicate that highly connected investors receive more information and hence, the impact of news is derived from the connectivity of investors within the network. The findings of the study also show that the social ties circle plays a crucial role in determining the impact of the news. The findings further indicate that the impact of news on investors’ perceptions also depends on the theme of the news.     

Are Investors Rational When Valuing Loss Firms?

The authors examine whether high valuation of loss firms really exists and can be explained by behavioral factors. This valuation may originate from irrational behavior of optimistic investors who prefer lottery-like stocks, or from rational expectations of firms' profitability. Using a sample of small Canadian firms going public, the authors show that both individual investors and underwriters price loss firms higher than profit firms, everything being equal. Post-IPO 3-year underperformance does not differ statistically between loss and profit firms. Investors thus apparently behave irrationally for all firms, but their irrationality does not seem greater for loss firms.     

Performance and diversification benefits of foreign-equity ETFs in emerging markets

This study provides a comprehensive review of the risk-return characteristics, performance and international diversification benefits of an uncharted fast-growing segment of the global exchange-traded fund (ETF) market by examining 17 foreign-equity ETFs traded in 6 emerging markets. The results indicate that the sample ETFs domiciled in these economies perform poorly providing relatively low returns while exposing emerging market investors to substantial total and systematic risks. In addition, these ETFs are found to be more sensitive to downside risk, making them relatively more vulnerable to market downturns. Although the foreign-equity ETFs are designed to provide investors with full international diversification benefits, we find that they are significantly affected by their local market conditions and sentiments, making them ineffective international diversification tools.     

Measuring Financial Risk Attitude: How to Apply Both Regulatory and Scientific Criteria to Ensure Suitability

Due to regulatory requirements, assessing investors' attitude toward financial risks is becoming increasingly important for advisors. To address this, the authors aimed to develop a risk attitude questionnaire, based on existing instruments, which fulfills both regulatory and scientific criteria. They conducted a survey on real investors and linked the survey data to actual portfolio data to test the validity of the instrument. The risk attitude index the authors developed uses only 6 easy-to-understand items, is reliable (Cronbach's α = 0.88), and explains substantial amounts of variance (R² = 0.40) in the investors' behavior. It therefore fulfills regulatory and scientific criteria.     

Mind the Gap: Inconsistencies Between Subjective and Objective Financial Risk Tolerance

Investors' financial risk tolerance is crucial in the formulation of suitable financial advice; in the past, assessment efforts relied on multiple approaches and techniques, but their consistency is still an issue. The authors focus on 2 metrics traditionally proposed (self-assessment and portfolio composition) and test their mutual consistency on a sample of 2,374 investors. The approach allows them to discriminate between inconsistencies due to wrong portfolio compositions and those arising from wrong self-assessments. The authors show that low financial literacy, high income, no children, and incautious economic behavior are commonly associated with such inconsistencies.     

Value maximizing hurdle rates for R&D investment

We show that the value maximizing hurdle rate for research and development (R&D) investments among private firms operating in a market setting is less than for conventional investments despite the fact that R&D has development risk. Because development risk arises only during R&D, entrepreneurs control this risk by deferring or pursuing R&D depending upon profitability. This risk management moderates downside loss and encourages upside gain which increases the value attraction of R&D and decreases the value maximizing hurdle rate below that of conventional investment.     

机构投资者如何影响企业创新——兼论机构投资者与企业异质性

机构投资者作为我国资本市场的重要组成部分,在公司治理外部监管等方面发挥着不可小觑的作用。将公司治理传导效应纳入机构持股与企业创新关系及作用机理分析框架,基于2007—2018年A股上市公司数据进行实证检验。结果发现,机构投资者持股显著促进企业创新,内部控制有效性、核心技术人员股权激励和管理费用控制是机构投资者促进企业创新的3个重要传导路径。另外,战略型机构投资者对企业创新的影响相较于财务型机构投资者更为突出;同时,机构投资者对非国有企业创新存在显著促进作用,但对国有企业整体创新的影响不显著。     

Assessing Recent Determinants of Borrowing Costs in Sub‐Saharan Africa

This study explores macroeconomic implications of the sovereign bond rush that has been taking place in sub‐Saharan Africa since 2006. The focus is on the sub‐Saharan sovereign bond yields as proxies for the region's ability to raise new funds on international markets. Despite the subcontinent's tour‐de‐force entrance to the international bond market, this paper reveals that recent (since early 2000s) borrowing in foreign currency is not without macroeconomic risk. Empirically this paper finds that sovereign bond yields are significantly influenced by global volatility, commodity prices and global liquidity—all factors that are out of the control of the sub‐Saharan economies in question. These findings suggest that portfolio repositioning by institutional investors prompted by improved growth prospects and implicit monetary policy tightening in the advanced economies or heightened risk perceptions, are likely to result in increased borrowing costs for the sub‐Saharan bond issuers and affect their ability to raise funds in international markets. Furthermore, a change in borrowing costs might lead to higher debt‐service costs and policy uncertainty, which in turn could lead to suboptimal investment levels and, ultimately, hinder economic development.