How Does Using a Mobile Device Change Investors’ Reactions to Firm Disclosures?

I examine how characteristics of investors’ information access tools change investors’ reactions to firm disclosures. I examine my research question in the context of information choice (i.e., allowing investors to choose the order of information and sections to read within a disclosure) and spatial layout (i.e., how information is displayed when viewing the disclosure). Results of an experiment are consistent with information choice improving investors’ judgments if the disclosure is viewed on a computer screen. Conversely, and consistent with cognitive overload, information choice harms investors’ judgments if the disclosure is viewed on a smaller screen, such as that of a mobile device. Follow-up experiments show that changing the disclosure presentation to reduce the need to scroll is one way to improve investors’ judgments on a smaller (or mobile) screen. My findings caution firms and regulators about expanding information choice within disclosures without considering the screen size used to access the disclosure.     

TROUGH TO PEAK: A NOTE ON RISK‐TAKING IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST'S BANKING SECTOR, 2001–2007

Using a cohort of 157 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insured banks based in the Pacific Northwest, this paper examines regional bank risk‐taking over the 2001–2007 economic expansion. The focus is on on‐balance sheet assets that carry a 100% risk weighting in the calculation of regulatory capital ratios. This study finds that Pacific Northwest banks significantly increased their share of 100% risk‐weighted assets between 2001 and 2007, largely through commercial real estate lending. Asset size, market concentration, age, metropolitan statistical area‐location, and balance sheet capacity for risk‐taking are statistically significant predictors of the change in the share of 100% risk‐weighted assets over the period of interest. (JEL G21, R11)     

THE RISK PREMIUM FOR EQUITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR RESOURCE ALLOCATION,WELFARE AND POLICY*

Analysis of the equity premium puzzle has focused on private sector capital markets. The object of this paper is to consider the welfare and policy implications of each of the broad classes of explanations of the equity premium puzzle. As would be expected, the greater the deviation from the first‐best outcome implied by a given explanation of the equity premium puzzle, the more interventionist are the implied policy conclusions. Nevertheless, even explanations of the equity premium puzzle consistent with a general consumption‐based asset pricing model have important welfare and policy implications.     

Profitability and Concentration in Australian Manufacturing Industries 1970-71 to 1972-73:A Further Examination*

In a recent issue of the Economic Record, D. K. Round found that, using I.A.C. data for 32 industries for the period 1970-71 to 1972–1973, sales-based measures of profitability were linked positively and significantly with concentration, but that funds-based measures showed a negative relationship. In this paper, the I AC profitability ratios are adjusted from an historical cost to a current value basis. Regressions of the adjusted profitability ratios on concentration, over the period 1970-71 to 1972-73, conflict with Round's finding that the concentration coefficient using net profit/sales was significant, and a much weaker relationship is found with all of the regressions that used adjusted, as compared to unadjusted, I AC profitability ratios.     

Fiaca and Veron‐ismo: Race and Silence in Argentine Football

This paper explores the relationship between race and post‐coloniality in Argentina through the prism of football. More specifically, it does so through a reading of the personage and physiognomy of Juan Sebastian Veron, one of Argentina's most renowned players. The paper uses the metaphor of fiaca, the cultural practice of ‘relaxation’, to discourse about football, and the celebrity that attains to Veron, and the ways in which sport functions as a loaded political intersection. The rendering of Veron as a black footballer facilitates a discussion about race, an anachronistic modernity, the complicated disjuncture between ideology and geography, and resistance to post‐coloniality as it obtains in contemporary Argentine society. Because of the signal role that football plays in Argentina, this paper argues that Veron – and his footballing predecessors and contemporaries – enables a complex engagement with the racial politics of this Latin American country – and its relationship to its neighbours.     

Delayed Reaction to Good News and the Cross-Autocorrelation of Portfolio Returns

We document a directional asymmetry in the small stock concurrent and lagged response to large stock movements. When returns on large stocks are negative, the concurrent beta for small stocks is high, but the lagged beta is insignificant. When returns on large stocks are positive, small stocks have small concurrent betas and very significant lagged betas. That is, the cross-autocorrelation puzzle documented by Lo and MacKinlay (1990a) is associated with a slow response by some small stocks to good, but not to bad, common news. Time series portfolio tests and cross-sectional tests of the delay for individual securities suggest that existing explanations of the cross-autocorrelation puzzle based on data mismeasurement, minor market imperfections, or time-varying risk premiums fail to capture the directional asymmetry in the data.     

Government Cannot Pick Winners

Despite its disavowal of state intervention in industry, the Government is still subsidising industries it thinks it can fertilise into increased profitability. Robert Grant denies that government with taxpayers' money is more alert to potential growth than private investors backing their judgement with their own money.