Population age structure and household portfolio choices in Italy

Based on the exceptional ageing of the Italian population, this paper aims to contribute to the current debate on population ageing and financial markets. To this end, we use the data taken by the Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth over the period 1995–2006, and we analyse the average household portfolios in relation to age and net wealth (NW). Our analysis rests on a clustering of assets according to risk, which is different from the one used in Guiso and Jappelli (Guiso, L., and T. Jappelli. 2002. The portfolio of Italian households. In Household portfolios, eds. L. Guiso, M. Haliassos, and T. Jappelli. Cambridge: MIT Press). We find that age has affected financial choices of Italian households over the whole decade, but the portfolio age profile has significantly evolved over time with important differences across wealth quartiles. Overall, our analysis highlights a tendency towards a hump-shaped age profile of the allocation in risky assets for the most NW levels.     

Stock weighting and nontrading bias in estimated portfolio returns

Liu and Strong (2008) note that researchers often employ a simple (but incorrect) averaging approach that induces significant error into estimated buy‐and‐hold portfolio returns. This study explores the additional challenges that arise when stocks are subject to nontrading. We develop a decomposition of the total bias in estimated return into the components attributable to the stock weighting approach and the treatment of nontrading. While the latter is shown to be negligible, the former can approach 150 basis points per month. Our empirical analysis of Australian equities shows that the simple averaging approach tends to overstate the size and book‐to‐market effects, and understate the momentum effect.     

A computing bias in estimating the probability of informed trading

This study identifies a factor that leads to a bias in estimating the probability of informed trading (PIN), a widely-used microstructure measure. It is shown that, along with the numerical maximization of the likelihood function for PIN, the floating-point exception (i.e., overflow or underflow) may eliminate feasible solutions to the actual parameters in the optimization problem. Approximately 44% of PIN estimates for recent stock market data may have been subject to a downward bias that is more pronounced for active stocks than for inactive stocks. This study develops a remedy to mitigate the resulting bias.     

Household portfolio choices,health status and health care systems: A cross-country analysis based on SHARE

Health risk is increasingly viewed as an important form of background risk that affects household portfolio decisions. However, its role might be mediated by the presence of a protective full-coverage national health service that could reduce households’ probability of incurring current and future out-of-pocket medical expenditures. We use SHARE data to study the influence of current health status and future health risk on the decision to hold risky assets, across ten European countries with different health systems, each offering a different degree of protection against out-of-pocket medical expenditures. We find robust empirical evidence that perceived health status matters more than objective health status and, consistent with the theory of background risk, health risk affects portfolio choices only in countries with less protective health care systems. Furthermore, portfolio decisions consistent with background risk models are observed only with respect to middle-aged and highly-educated investors.     

Home bias in equity portfolios, inflation hedging, and international capital market equilibrium

We test whether the home bias in equity portfolios is causedby investors trying to hedge inflation risk. The empirical evidenceis consistent with this motive only if investors have very highlevels of risk tolerance and equity returns are negatively correlatedwith domestic inflation. We then develop a model of internationalportfolio choice and equity market equilibrium that integratesinflation risk and deadweight costs. Using this model we estimatethe levels of costs required to generate the observed home biasin portfolios consistent with different levels of risk aversion.For a level of risk aversion consistent with standard estimatesof the domestic equity market risk premium these costs are abouta few percent per annum greater than observable costs such aswithholding taxes. Thus, the home bias cannot be explained byeither inflation hedging or direct observable costs of internationalinvestment unless investors have very low levels of risk aversion.     

My global fund portfolio is not yours: the effect of home bias on European- and US-managed convertible bond fund exposures

This paper shows that global convertible bond funds (CBFs) and their resulting equity-bond exposures are regionally biased. Global bond fund managers display home bias, resulting in CBFs that are not only tilted towards the home market but also reflect the different bond-equity exposures of European and US convertibles. More specifically we find that global funds managed by a European asset management firm are more bond-like than global funds managed by a US-based asset manager. Hence, investors have to account for the asset management company's origin to avoid that the performance of the fund and its correlation with other assets is not in line with investor's ex ante expectations about globally managed portfolios. Our results also indicate that for investors of European-based CBFs this home bias has resulted in an ex post opportunity cost up to 1.38% per year, depending on the sample period.     

“Holier-than-thou” perception bias among professional accountants: A cross-cultural study

Theoretical conceptions of culture in accounting research are controversial, ranging from highly deterministic, quantified and componential perspectives (such as Hosfstede's five dimensional model) to those that suggest continual changes in cultural values brought about by forces of acculturation. This paper makes a contribution to cross-cultural accounting research by examining the influence of competing theoretical perspectives of culture and acculturation on “holier-than-thou” perception bias. “Holier-than-thou” perception bias leads to individuals perceiving themselves as acting more ethically than comparable others when confronted with ethically uncertain work-related behaviours. This study contributes to cross-cultural accounting research by surveying Australian and Indian professional accountants from big four accounting firms. We firstly seek to establish the prevalence of “holier-than-thou” perception bias in both cultural settings. Secondly, we examine the differential and competing influences of culture and acculturation on perceptions of accountants from the two countries on measures of this bias. Data was collected through a survey questionnaire administered to samples of senior accountants from the big accounting firms in Australia and India. The questionnaire comprised an auditor-client conflict and two whistle-blowing scenarios and used two questions to measure the magnitude of the bias. The results show that “holier-than-thou” perception bias exists among accountants within each of the two countries. However, the magnitude of the bias was not significant between the countries. The results support the theory of acculturation in big accounting firms. Our findings have implications for accounting research where the presence of “holier-than-thou” perception bias needs to be considered in cases where respondents are questioned on socially sensitive issues. The findings may be useful to accounting researchers, managers of multinational enterprises in general, and big-four accounting firms in particular. Our conceptual framework applied in this study is innovative and provides a template for assessing current controversies in cross-cultural accounting research.     

Home Bias at Home: Local Equity Preference in Domestic Portfolios

The strong bias in favor of domestic securities is a well-documented characteristic of international investment portfolios, yet we show that the preference for investing close to home also applies to portfolios of domestic stocks. Specifically, U.S. investment managers exhibit a strong preference for locally headquartered firms, particularly small, highly levered firms that produce nontraded goods. These results suggest that asymmetric information between local and nonlocal investors may drive the preference for geographically proximate investments, and the relation between investment proximity and firm size and leverage may shed light on several well-documented asset pricing anomalies.     

International portfolio diversification: A study of linkages among the U.S., European and Japanese equity markets

In this paper, we examine the short-term linkages among five leading stock markets with the objective of evaluating the case for international portfolio diversification as well as the stability of stock market interdependence after an exogenous shock. We utilize daily closing equity price data from U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Japan during the period from January 1999 to February 2002 and investigate the joint impact of any four equity markets on the fifth market. The findings indicate that even though the interdependencies among the markets are significant, there is still room for international portfolio diversification. Also, the study provides mixed results for the hypothesis that the international market correlations change after an exogenous shock. The tests of stability of correlations are based on before-and-after analyses of two events: the introduction by the European Union of the euro as official currency and the September 11, 2001, terrorist events in U.S.     

Transfers and bequests: a portfolio analysis in a Nash game

This paper develops a two-stage non-cooperative Nash game framework of parental–children interactions to explain the equal division puzzle in bequests. In the analysis, a portfolio approach is adopted for characterizing how altruistic parents allocate their inheritable wealth between inter-vivos transfers and post-mortem bequests. The model includes elements of strategic altruism, exchange of family-specific merit goods, transfer-seeking behavior by competing siblings, and parents’ “post-mortem reputation” in bequest division. Allowing for children’s heterogeneity and interactions, we find that inter-vivos transfers are unevenly distributed between the children, despite an equal degree of parental altruism. Moreover, we show the compatibility of unequal inter-vivos transfers and equal bequests, regardless of earnings differentials across children.      

WTI crude oil Futures in portfolio diversification: The time-to-maturity effect

The aim of the paper is to analyze the diversification effect brought by crude oil Futures contracts, the most liquid commodity Futures, into a portfolio of stocks. The studies that have documented the very low- and essentially negative-correlations between commodities and equities typically rely on normally distributed returns, which is not the case for crude oil Futures and stocks indexes. Moreover, the particular time-to-maturity chosen for the Future contract used as an investment vehicle is an important matter that needs to be addressed, in presence of forward curves switching between backwardation and contango shapes.Our goal in this paper is twofold: (a) we introduce copula functions to have a better representation of the dependence structure of oil Futures with equity indexes; (b) using this copula representation, we are able to analyze in a precise manner the “maturity effect” in the choice of crude oil Future contract with respect to its diversification benefits. Our finding is that, in the case of distant maturities Futures, e.g., 18 months, the negative correlation effect is more pronounced whether stock prices increase or decrease. This property has the merit to avoid the hurdles of a frequent roll over while being quite desirable in the current trendless equity markets. Empirical evidence is exhibited on a database comprising the NYMEX WTI crude oil Futures and S&P 500 index over a 15 year-time period.     

Family learning in the workplace: nurturing lifelong learning

Lifelong learning must become a reality for all employees if we are to create and sustain organizations which can survive in the knowledge economy of the future. But how do we engage those who never access training and development opportunities at work? In this article it is argued that these people may be attracted back to learning by offering them opportunities at work to learn with their families.This different method of facilitating lifelong learning is examined here. The benefits to business and the wider community of encouraging families to learn together at work are explored. It is concluded that the addition of family learning in organisations to our current range of training and development activities can engage a new constituency in learning at work and can model the importance of lifelong learning to a new generation of future employees.     

Optimal portfolio choice in real terms: Measuring the benefits of TIPS

In this paper we solve an optimal portfolio choice problem to measure the benefits of Treasury Inflation Indexed Securities (TIPS) to investors concerned with maximizing real wealth. We show how the introduction of a real riskless asset completes the investor asset space, by contrasting optimal portfolio allocations with and without such assets. We use historical data to quantify gains from availability of TIPS in the presence of other asset classes such as equities, commodities, and real estate. We draw a distinction between buy-and-hold long-term investors for whom TIPS fully displace nominal risk-free assets and short-term investors for whom TIPS improve the investment opportunity set of real returns. Finally, we show how gains from TIPS are tempered by the availability of alternative assets that covary with inflation, such as gold and real estate.     

Time-consistency in managing a commodity portfolio: A dynamic risk measure approach

We address the problem of managing a storable commodity portfolio, that includes physical assets and positions in spot and forward markets. The vast amount of capital involved in the acquisition of a power plant or storage facility implies that the financing period stretches over a period of several quarters or years. Hence, an intertemporally consistent way of optimizing the portfolio over the planning horizon is required. We demonstrate the temporal inconsistency of static risk objectives based on final wealth and advocate the validity in our setting of a new class of recursive risk measures introduced by Epstein and Zin [Epstein, G., Zin, S., 1989. Substitution, risk aversion, and the temporal behavior of consumption and asset returns: A theoretical framework. Econometrica, 57 (4) 937–969] and Wang [Wang, T., 2000. A class of dynamic risk measures University of British Columbia]. These risk measures provide important insights on the trade-offs between date-specific risks (i.e., losses occurring at a point in time) and time-duration risks represented by the pair (return, risk) over a planning horizon; in a number of situations, they dramatically improve the efficiency of static risk objectives, as exhibited in numerical examples.     

Dancing in the dark: post-trade anonymity,liquidity and informed trading

We analyze the impact of post-trade anonymity on liquidity and informed trading in an order driven stock market. The German stock market introduced the Central Counterparty (CCP) in March 2003 for German equities traded on its anonymous electronic trading platform Xetra leading to a major change in its existing transparency regime. Before the introduction trader IDs were revealed to the counterparties of a trade, with the introduction of the CCP even after the transaction the traders remain anonymous. Previous theoretical and empirical research documents that pre-trade anonymity results in increased liquidity, while results on post-trade anonymity are mixed. We find a significant increase in liquidity measured through a reduction of 25% in implicit transaction costs. We also document that the arrival rate of informed traders is reduced in the anonymous setting. Following recent findings of Bloomfield et al. (J Finan Econ 75:165–199, 2005) that informed traders take on the role of liquidity providers we interpret our findings as indication that informed traders change their behavior in providing liquidity more aggressively in an anonymous environment.     

Stock recommendations and investment portfolio formation: A study in the Brazilian market

The stock analysts have a relevant role in the capital market, since, directly or indirectly, they contribute to the paper pricing and to the composition of the investment portfolio. The purpose of this study is to verify if it is possible to obtain extraordinary returns, above those offered by a market portfolio, with the monitoring of the stock recommendations issued by Brazilian capital market analysts, one of the most important in Latin America. Based on a wide range of consensual recommendations concerning the period from 2000 to 2010, and with the monitoring of the historical series of paper returns covered by the analyses, the performance of two portfolios were compared, one formed by stocks that received favorable and the other one formed by stocks that received unfavorable analyst recommendations. The results showed bias in recommendations, since there is, systematically, a greater number of favorable against unfavorable recommendations. The results mainly showed that the analysts were unable to identify the stocks that actually offered greater returns within the period considered.     

Checking for asymmetric default dependence in a credit card portfolio: A copula approach

Traditional credit risk models adopt the linear correlation as a measure of dependence and assume that credit losses are normally-distributed. However some studies have shown that credit losses are seldom normal and the linear correlation does not give accurate assessment for asymmetric data. Therefore it is possible that many credit models tend to misestimate the probability of joint extreme defaults.This paper employs Copula Theory to model the dependence across default rates in a credit card portfolio of a large UK bank and to estimate the likelihood of joint high default rates. Ten copula families are used as candidates to represent the dependence structure. The empirical analysis shows that, when compared to traditional models, estimations based on asymmetric copulas usually yield results closer to the ratio of simultaneous extreme losses observed in the credit card portfolio.Copulas have been applied to evaluate the dependence among corporate debts but this research is the first paper to give evidence of the outperformance of copula estimations in portfolios of consumer loans. Moreover we test some families of copulas that are not typically considered in credit risk studies and find out that three of them are suitable for representing dependence across credit card defaults.     

The only game in town: Stock-price consequences of local bias

Theory suggests that, in the presence of local bias, the price of a stock should be decreasing in the ratio of the aggregate book value of firms in its region to the aggregate risk tolerance of investors in its region. Using data on U.S. states and Census regions, we find clear-cut support for this proposition. Most of the variation in the ratio of interest comes from differences across regions in aggregate book value per capita. Regions with low population density—e.g., the Deep South—are home to relatively few firms per capita, which leads to higher stock prices via an “only-game-in-town” effect.     

Commercial bank asset portfolio behavior in the United States: Evidence of a change in structure

The development of a short-term borrowing option by a financial industry should lower the liquid-asset share of its portfolio and increase the shares invested in higher-earning, less-liquid, alternative investments. A marked shift in commercial-bank portfolio shares in this direction did, in fact, occur between 1960 and 1970. The development of a borrowing option should also increase the willingness of banks to satisfy temporary extraordinary demands for funds by their customers. Comparison of equation estimates on data from the 1960s and the 1970s is strongly supportive of the increased-willingness hypothesis regarding loans to both businesses and households.     

Art as an investment: risk, return and portfolio diversification in major painting markets

The present paper examines risk, return and the prospects for portfolio diversification among major painting and financial markets over the period 1976–2001. The art markets examined are Contemporary Masters, French Impressionists, Modern European, 19th Century European, Old Masters, Surrealists, 20th Century English and Modern US paintings. The financial markets comprise US Treasury bills, corporate and government bonds and small and large company stocks. In common with the published literature in this area, the present study finds that the returns on paintings are much lower and the risks much higher than conventional investment markets. Moreover, while low correlations of returns suggest that opportunities for portfolio diversification in art works alone and in conjunction with equity markets exist, the construction of Markowitz mean‐variance efficient portfolios indicates that no diversification gains are provided by art in financial asset portfolios. However, diversification benefits in portfolios comprised solely of art works are possible, with Contemporary Masters, 19th Century European, Old Masters and 20th Century English paintings dominating the efficient frontier during the period in question.