A detailed investigation of the disposition effect and individual trading behavior: a panel survival approach

This article uses a panel survival approach to analyze the trading behavior of foreign exchange traders. We concentrate on a detailed characterization of the shape of the disposition effect over the entire profit and loss regions. In doing so, we investigate the influence of a number of trading characteristics on the impact of the disposition effect. These trading characteristics include: special limit order strategies, trading success, size and the experience of our investors. Our main findings are that (i) the disposition effect has a nonlinear shape. For small profits and losses we find an inverted disposition effect, while for larger ones, the usual positive disposition effect emerges. (ii) The inverted disposition effect is driven to a great extend by patient and cautious investors closing their positions with special limit orders (take-profit and stop-loss). The normal positive disposition effect is found to be intensified for impatient investors closing their positions actively with market orders. (iii) We show that unsuccessful investors reveal a stronger inverse disposition effect. (iv) Evidence that bigger investors are less prone to the disposition effect than smaller investors is also found.     

Institutionalizing Ethical Innovation in Organizations: An Integrated Causal Model of Moral Innovation Decision Processes

This article answers several calls—coming as well from corporate governance practitioners as from corporate governance researchers—concerning the possibility of complying simultaneously with requirements of innovation and ethics. Revealing the long-term orientation as the variable which permits us to link the principal goal of organization, being “survival,” with innovation and ethic, the article devises a framework for incorporating ethics into a company’s processes and strategies for innovation. With the principal goal of organizations being “survival” in the long-term, it is assumed that innovation is necessary in order to realize a going concern. Firms that do not innovate and adapt to rapidly changing business environments are less likely to be sustainable. Thus, it is in a business’ best interests to adopt an innovation process for long-term success. We posit that there are two simultaneous sources of innovation and change that are unavoidable and embedded in the corporate landscape. First, we argue for genetically embedded, Darwinian explanations for adaptations that enable an entity’s survival. This view is combined with more conventional, social science explanations for change. Our new, comprehensive model of the governance of innovation processes hinges on the one hand on an organization’s long-term orientation, which we argue, is not possible without a consideration of an ethical dimension. On the other hand, the model employs, for the first time, the concept of duality, in order to make the positive coexistence of innovation and ethic analytically visible. Guided by this concept the roots of the ethic within innovation are traced from both natural science forces for change, and cultural pressures operating on members of an organization. We present our Integrated Causal Model of Innovation and propose theoretical relationships that will generate numerous avenues for future research in the field, and help managers to reorient their governance strategies.     

An Integrative HRM Process Theorization: Beyond Signalling Effects and Mutual Gains

How and for whom HRM creates value are key questions in management research. The present study develops and tests an integrative HRM process theorization positing the existence of mutually reinforcing ability–motivation–opportunity, signalling, and identity‐based control mechanisms of the influence of HRM on both employee performance and work intensification. In addition to providing empirical support for the ‘how’ of value creation through HRM, the study contributes to the growing critique of the dominant mutual‐gains perspective, the notion that HRM outcomes are straightforwardly positive for both employers and employees. The integrative theorization also opens up interesting avenues for future research on the individual and organizational performance effects of HRM.     

Why costless auditing may reduce social welfare

We analyze a model where both a regulator and a firm may detect and stop bad projects. We show that full auditing by the regulator may be socially suboptimal even with zero auditing costs. The reason is that the firm's own auditing incentive may be crowded out when protected by limited liability. The optimal policy depends on the firm's wealth.     

Estimating gravity equations: to log or not to log?

In this study we compare the traditional OLS approach applied to the log-linear form of the gravity model with the Poisson Quasi Maximum Likelihood (PQML) estimation procedure applied to the non-linear multiplicative specification of the gravity model. We use the trade flows for all products, for all manufacturing products as well as for manufacturing products broken down by three-digit ISIC Rev.2 categories. We base our conclusions on the gravity model of Bergstrand (Rev Econ Stat 71(1):143--153, 1989) for disaggregate trade flows that allows us to investigate differences in factor-proportions and home-market effects at the industry level. In addition, we compare the effects of other explanatory variables such as exporter and importer total income, distance, preferential trade agreements, common border, historical ties, and common language on the volume of trade. Our main conclusion is that both estimation results as well as results of the regression mis-specification tests provide supporting evidence for the PQML estimation approach over the OLS estimation method. The paper has benefited from comments by an anonymous referee and by the participants at the following conferences: the 4th Nordic Econometrics Meeting, Tartu, Estonia, the 8th Annual Conference of the European Trade Study Group (ETSG), Vienna, Austria, the 21th Annual Congress of the European Economic Association (EEA), Vienna, Austria, the XIth Spring Meeting of Young Economists (SMYE), Sevilla, Spain, and the 5th Annual Conference of the European Economics and Finance Society (EEFS), Heraklion, Greece.     

COHERENT ACCEPTABILITY MEASURES IN MULTIPERIOD MODELS

The framework of coherent risk measures has been introduced by Artzner et al. (1999; Math. Finance 9, 203–228) in a single-period setting. Here, we investigate a similar framework in a multiperiod context. We add an axiom of dynamic consistency to the standard coherence axioms, and obtain a representation theorem in terms of collections of multiperiod probability measures that satisfy a certain product property. This theorem is similar to results obtained by Epstein and Schneider (2003; J. Econ. Theor. 113, 1–31) and Wang (2003; J. Econ. Theor. 108, 286–321) in a different axiomatic framework. We then apply our representation result to the pricing of derivatives in incomplete markets, extending results by Carr, Geman, and Madan (2001; J. Financial Econ. 32, 131–167) to the multiperiod case. We present recursive formulas for the computation of price bounds and corresponding optimal hedges. When no shortselling constraints are present, we obtain a recursive formula for price bounds in terms of martingale measures.     

Employment effects of the European internal market

The completion of the European internal market is generally expected to have beneficial welfare and growth effects. To what extent will they lead to a change in employment? How will the employment effects be distributed among countries, industries and social groups?     

The determinants of bank interest rate margins: an international study

This paper studies the determinants of bank net interest margins (NIMs) in six selected European countries and the US during the period 1988–1995 for a sample of 614 banks. We apply the Ho and Saunders model (Ho, T., Saunders, A., 1981. The determinants of bank interest margins: theory and empirical evidence. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analyses 16, 581–600) to a multicountry setting and decompose bank margins into a regulatory component, a market structure component and a risk premium component. The regulatory components in the form of interest-rate restrictions on deposits, reserve requirements and capital-to-asset ratios have a significant impact on banks NIMs. The empirical results suggest an important policy trade-off between assuring bank solvency—high capital-to-asset ratios—and lowering the cost of financial services to consumers—low NIMs. The more segmented or restricted the banking system—both geographically and by activity—the larger appears to be the monopoly power of existing banks, and the higher their spreads. Macro interest-rate volatility was found to have a significant impact on bank NIMs; this suggests that macro policies consistent with reduced interest-rate volatility could have a positive effect in reducing bank margins.     

Information Management and Incentives

We ask how the incentives of an agent are affected by an information management system that lets the agent receive information about the performance of a colleague before (“transparent firm”) rather than after he provides effort (“nontransparent firm”). Transparency is detrimental for incentives if the performance of the colleague provides information on the relative impact of the agent’s effort on his success probability. The findings imply that firms in which comparisons between employees play a minor role for compensation are transparent. Firms in which they play a major role sometimes choose to be nontransparent despite the flexibility gains transparency provides.