Does Branch Religiosity Influence Bank Risk‐Taking?

Using branch‐level data on public and private US banking institutions, we investigate the importance of branch religiosity in shaping bank risk‐taking behavior. Our results show robust evidence that branch religiosity is negatively related to bank risk‐taking. This effect persists after controlling for several bank‐level and county‐level variables that might correlate with religiosity. Moreover, this result is robust to controlling for headquarter religiosity, suggesting that the effect of branch religiosity is additive and not washed out by headquarter religiosity. Overall, our findings document that headquarter religiosity does not capture the full effect of religiosity on bank behavior, as claimed by previous research, but that the religiosity of the geographic area in which the bank operates significantly influences bank behavior.     

Risk aversion vs. individualism: what drives risk taking in household finance?

Despite a considerable premium on equity with respect to risk-free assets, many households do not own stocks. We ask why the prevalence of stockholding is so limited. We focus on individuals’ attitudes toward risk and identify relevant factors that affect the willingness to take financial risks. Our empirical evidence contradicts standard portfolio theory, as it does not indicate a significant relationship between risk aversion and financial risk taking. However, our analysis supports the behavioral view that psychological factors rooted in national culture affect portfolio choice. Individualism, which is linked to overconfidence and overoptimism, has a significantly positive effect on financial risk taking. In microdata from Germany and Singapore, as well as in cross-country data, we find evidence consistent with low levels of individualism being an important factor in explaining the limited participation puzzle.     

货币政策对保险公司风险承担的传导机制与影响效果研究

本文对货币政策在保险行业中的传导机制进行了理论分析,结合保险公司的内生互动网络特征,以我国保险全行业进行实证研究.从数量型、价格型、政策虚拟变量等多种角度选择货币政策代理变量,构建面板模型,探究货币政策对我国保险公司风险承担的影响效果,进一步运用两步处理法,识别货币政策对风险承担的具体传导机制.实证结果表明,我国保险公...     

Do Foreign Investors Encourage Value-Enhancing Corporate Risk Taking?

This paper examines whether foreign investors in Korea affect incentives for firms to take risks in corporate investment. The short-term focus of foreign investors encourages managers to engage in conservative investment behavior. On the other hand, foreign investors encourage managers to focus on long-term value rather than short-term returns as active participants in corporate governance. These competing views are examined by testing for the association between foreign ownership and variations in corporate cash flow, a proxy for the risk of chosen investments. Furthermore, we examine whether risk taking is positively associated with firm growth, which is a primary concern in debates regarding the myopic behaviors of foreign investors. The results show that firms with high foreign ownership are less likely to avoid risk taking—and that risk taking is, in turn, positively associated with firm growth, implying that foreign investors perform a monitoring function in encouraging value-enhancing risk taking.     

Fortune Favours the Bold? Exploring Tournament Behavior among Australian Superannuation Funds

In this paper we investigate the tournament induced risk-shifting behavior of Australian “multi-sector growth funds”. We apply a regression-based methodology and examine tournaments based on the calendar year and the financial year. In our core analysis we find evidence in favor of Taylor’s (J Econ Behav Organ 1455:1–11, 2003) risk shifting tournament hypothesis for financial year-end tournaments. Apart from the standard tournament hypothesis we also report a range of findings regarding stability; fund age; and fund size. Support for the Taylor hypothesis generally continues across these variations as well.

The effects of risk‐taking tendency on risk choice and pre‐ and post‐decisional information selection

Ideally, people seek and select information about unfamiliar risks with which they are confronted, before they make a risk choice. This study investigated what happens when people do not have this opportunity. The main question was how risk‐taking tendency influences intuitive risk decisions and how this impacts subsequent information search and subsequent choices. In the present study, participants had to make a choice about an unfamiliar risk, either before or after they had had the opportunity to search for (risk‐promoting or risk‐averse) information. In the condition where they could only seek for information after they had made a choice, they had to reconsider their first choice and make a second risk choice. We expected that (1) risk‐taking tendency would impact people's risk choices, but only in the situation where they have little information. On the basis of cognitive dissonance theory, it was furthermore predicted that (2) risk‐taking tendency and (3) initial risk choice would affect risk information selection. Furthermore, we predicted that (4) the first risk choice and (5) the risk information selected would influence the subsequent risk choice. The results suggest that if people make a first, intuitive decision about an unknown risk, risk‐taking tendency has an effect on the choice, but that this does not happen when people can first select information. Risk‐taking tendency did not influence information selection, but initial choice did (although in another way than we expected). Furthermore, both the first risk choice and the risk information selected affected subsequent risk choices. These findings suggest that people often make initial intuitive decisions that are influenced by personality characteristics, and that are subsequently difficult to change.     

Globalization and Risky Human-Capital Investment

Globalization is supposed to increase the mobility of highly skilled labor and to reduce governments' scope for redistribution. We show that this increases the private incentives for education and may decrease, but may also increase, the government's incentives to provide education subsidies in a framework in which education investment is risky. Globalization shifts the cost of these subsidies to the less skilled. For the welfare implications of globalization the availability of private insurance is crucial. Welfare unambiguously increases if such markets work.     

Sharing Risk with the Government: How Taxes Affect Corporate Risk Taking

Using 113 staggered changes in corporate income tax rates across U.S. states, we provide evidence on how taxes affect corporate risk‐taking decisions. Higher taxes reduce expected profits more for risky projects than for safe ones, as the government shares in a firm's upside but not in its downside. Consistent with this prediction, we find that risk taking is sensitive to taxes, albeit asymmetrically: the average firm reduces risk in response to a tax increase (primarily by changing its operating cycle and reducing R&D risk) but does not respond to a tax cut. We trace the asymmetry back to constraints on risk taking imposed by creditors. Finally, tax loss‐offset rules moderate firms’ sensitivity to taxes by allowing firms to partly share downside risk with the government.     

资本监管、风险承担与货币政策传导机制——研究综述与展望

频频爆发的银行危机暴露了以资本监管为核心的巴塞尔协议的内在缺陷,学术界就资本监管的微观效应和宏观效应展开了激烈的讨论.从文献研究的角度,通过回顾和分析理论界关于资本监管、银行风险承担和货币政策传导机制三者之间复杂关系的研究,可以看出,在微观意义上,关于资本监管对银行风险承担行为影响的研究忽视了对资本监管框架效应的分析;在宏观意义上,资本监管的强化给货币政策传导机制带来了新的渠道,即银行资本渠道和风险承担渠道.这两种新的传导机制在后金融危机时代,是研究宏观审慎监管框架下货币政策效应的核心命题.     

Differences in the strengths of evidence matters in risk–risk trade-offs

Making decisions between alternatives are challenging when there is weak or unreliable knowledge about the risks and benefits of the alternatives. This requires a trade-off between risks (and benefits). Here, we comment on a recent paper on risk–risk trade-offs and highlight the difficulties of making such trade-offs when the available evidence is of different strength. One current example of a risk–risk trade-off under weak evidence is the restriction and reevaluation of the risks of neonicotinoid insecticides to bees conducted by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). We argue that a risk–risk trade-off is essential in this context. Although considerable research efforts have been focused at determining the risks of neonicotinoids to bees, the evidence base is still limited. However, focus on strengthening evidence on impacts of one substance may lead policy-makers and public to believe that its substitutes are less harmful, when in fact evidence is weak on the impacts of these substitutes as well. We argue that a broader management of uncertainty is needed and that the difference in uncertainty underlying evidence of risk for different alternatives needs to be communicated to policy-makers. We suggest that this can be done, for example, using measures of uncertainty, which take into account strength in evidence, and combine these with principles to guide decision-making.