Investing in the S&P 500 index: Can anything beat the buy‐and‐hold strategy?

Determining whether investment strategies exist that provide higher (risk‐adjusted) returns than buying and holding the S&P 500 stock market index is not only highly relevant for finance theory, but also for the asset management industry. This study conducts a comprehensive test using realistic investment strategies based on monthly seasonalities, technical indicators, and fundamental factors (over 4,100 strategies in total). To assess statistical significance, we use Hansen's data‐snooping‐resistant SPA test. The results show that only investment strategies trying to exploit underreaction and overreaction effects with technical indicators dominate the buy‐and‐hold strategy in some simulation setups. These investment strategies are clearly superior to the strategies based on seasonalities and fundamental factors. Given that underreaction and overreaction effects are mainly justified with cognitive biases, our results support the economic relevance of behavioral finance insights.     

Asynchronized multiperiod commitments and cycles

We consider a game where agents can synchronize or stagger their decisions. We compare the outcomes of both timing patterns, and show that spillovers and strategic interactions are crucial for such a comparison. A typology used in industrial organization, distinguishing four cases (‘Fat-Cat’, ‘Top Dog’, Lean and Hungry’, ‘Puppy Dog’), allows us to compare the actions taken in the staggered variant and in the synchronized one. The staggered variant exhibits cycles and players are both better-off when there are strategic complementarities between them. A timing game is then set-up so as to endogenize the choice between the two variants we study.Two examples are developed: (i) Bertrand competition and (ii) a wage setting game when there are two monopoly unions in two interrelated firms. We show that the staggering of price decisions generates counter-cyclical mark-ups in the first example, and the staggering of wage decisions generates cycling output in the industry in the second example.     

Responsibility and Informal CSR in Formal Cameroonian SMEs

In this article, we explore the implicit conceptions of business ethics and social responsibility of owners?managers of small and medium enterprises (SME) in Cameroon. While using a hermeneutical approach, our main objective is to clarify how Sub-Saharan African business people themselves understand and define corporate responsibility in their particular economic and political environment. Our aim is not to deliver an empirical study of business practices and management behavior in SMEs. We wish to discuss which responsibilities they themselves judge to be relevant and which can legitimately be attributed to them by third parties. Secondly, we relate our findings to other empirical work on SMEs, in Africa and elsewhere. It is shown that there are similarities with the way in which SMEs in Europe interpret their responsibility, but also striking differences. Further, we relate our findings to some theoretical controversies around corporate social responsibility (CSR) in SMEs, to questions about evaluation tools for CSR in the SME context, and to the role of CSR with respect to poverty alleviation in developing countries.     

A remark on rational expectation equilibria with incomplete markets and real assets

In this note, I established the existence, for a generic set of endowments, of a fully revealing rational expectation equilibrium (REE) in an economy characterized by incomplete markets and real assets.     

Creativity methods in technological forecasting

“Technological Forecasting and Applications” was the title given to the Second European Technological Forecasting Association conference held in Paris in May. It was sponsored by ADETEM, The Association for the Development of Marketing Techniques, and was therefore somewhat inclined to that aspect of management studies. However, a number of papers reflected the increasing acceptance of the notion of technological forecasting both in France and in the UK, and illustrated various methods and applications. An example is the following contribution which introduces creativity techniques to the practice of technological forecasting.     

Publikationen deutschsprachiger Forscher in Top-Journals (4. Quartal 2010)

Aktuelle Publikationen

Publikationen deutschsprachiger Forscher in Top-Journals (4. Quartal 2010)     

Portfolio insurance and prospect theory investors: Popularity and optimal design of capital protected financial products

Portfolio insurance strategies are used on both the institutional and the retail side of the asset management industry. While standard utility theory struggles to provide an explanation, this study justifies the popularity of portfolio insurance strategies in a behavioral finance context. We run Monte Carlo simulations as well as historical simulations for popular portfolio insurance strategies and benchmark strategies in order to evaluate the outcomes using cumulative prospect theory. Our simulation results indicate that most portfolio insurance strategies are the preferred investment strategy for a prospect theory investor. Moreover, the analysis provides insights into how portfolio insurance products should be designed and structured to meet the preferences of prospect theory investors as accurately as possible.