Exponential Growth Bias and Household Finance

Exponential growth bias is the pervasive tendency to linearize exponential functions when assessing them intuitively. We show that exponential growth bias can explain two stylized facts in household finance: the tendency to underestimate an interest rate given other loan terms, and the tendency to underestimate a future value given other investment terms. Bias matters empirically: More‐biased households borrow more, save less, favor shorter maturities, and use and benefit more from financial advice, conditional on a rich set of household characteristics. There is little evidence that our measure of exponential growth bias merely proxies for broader financial sophistication.     

An Adjustment Procedure for Predicting Betas When Thin Trading is Present: Canadian Evidence

We have incorporated effects of the process that generates true betas for TSE stocks, as well as thin trading effects, into the beta adjustment model. We note the Blume and Dimson and Marsh beta adjustment techniques aim at eliminating beta forecast error through regression tendency bias. Effects of other sources of forecast error have been ignored. We show the process generating security betas affects both cross-sectional correlation coefficient and order bias, while thin trading affects only cross-sectional correlation coefficient. We demonstrate that when OLS beta estimates are used to forecast their future risk levels, order bias accounts for 86% of forecast error, while thin trading effects account for 14% of forecast error. A beta regression tendency model which properly accounts for effects of cross-sectional correlation (which is a function of thin trading) and order bias completely abates forecast error. Our results have implications for the use of correlation coefficient to measure stability of betas across time, for beta adjustment models proposed in the literature, and for event study methodologies that rely on prediction errors.     

Does the location of stock exchange matter? A within-country analysis

The current study documents an interesting phenomenon that retail investors prefer to invest in stocks listed at the stock exchange that is geographically close to them in China. This pattern is robust when we control for the well-documented local bias within a country. Among companies with similar distances to both stock exchanges and companies headquartered locally, investors still display a strong tendency to invest in locally-listed stocks. Among stocks with similar distances to both stock exchanges, those listed in Shanghai (Shenzhen) co-move more in returns and trading volumes, with the benchmark at the Shanghai (Shenzhen) stock exchange. Such a preference for local exchange seems not to be motivated by information advantage, because investors do not obtain abnormal returns from their trades on stocks listed nearby. Our findings provide additional evidence that non-information-based familiarity bias induces investment and that such investor bias and exchange-level sentiment influence asset price formation.     

Information friction and investor home bias: A perspective on the effect of global IFRS adoption on the extent of equity home bias

This paper provides a perspective on the effect of IFRS adoption on the tendency of investors to under-invest in foreign equities. We consider explanations for the equity home bias described in prior research and discuss research relevant to the informational consequences of global adoption of IFRS. Specifically, we evaluate whether IFRS adoption reduces information processing costs or decreases investor uncertainty about either the quality of financial reporting or the distribution of future cash flows. We predict that the effect of any reduction in information processing costs from the adoption of IFRS is likely to be small relative to the effects of other determinants of home bias such as the strength of investor protection mechanisms in foreign countries, behavioral biases toward familiar equities, and informational advantages related to geographical proximity. We argue that the quality of the information that investors have (or perceive they have) decreases with distance, conclude that global IFRS adoption is unlikely to affect home bias, and propose avenues for future research.     

Financial Analysts and the False Consensus Effect

Social psychologists have documented a tendency for people to overestimate their similarity to others. I investigate whether financial analysts' forecast errors are consistent with this bias. I model the bias by assuming analysts overestimate the correlation of the private signals they receive about a firm's future earnings. My model predicts a positive relationship between (i) the likelihood of an analyst's revised forecast being too close to his earlier forecast and (ii) the number of analysts issuing forecasts during the time interval between his two forecasts. I empirically confirm this prediction and consider several alternative explanations.     

Effect of emotion regulation as a de-biasing mechanism on overconfidence in investment behavior

Overconfidence is a bias closely associated with strong positive emotions such as pride. Strong positive emotions can hamper effective decision-making. This paper is predicated on the hypothesis that if investors with a pronounced tendency toward overconfidence can regulate strong positive emotions, they will be able to reduce bias and avoid subpar investment performance. We investigated the relationships among overconfidence, positive emotional reactions, and strategies for regulating emotions after a gain in the stock investment area, where investors succumb to overconfidence and important financial decisions are made. Identifying the differences in cognitive processes and emotion regulation strategies, which more or less overconfident investors exhibit, will in turn provide a de-bias mechanism to reduce overconfidence. The findings of this research will help investors avoid overconfidence by using strategies for emotional regulation reported in this study in order to achieve decision excellence.     

New evidence on sovereign to corporate credit rating spill-overs

We explore what happens to domestic firm-level ratings around the time of a sovereign-rating action on a day-by-day and country-by-country basis. Our granular approach provides banks and investors with a fuller picture of their sovereign credit risk exposure and, as such, our analysis might feed into banks' internal modelling of their credit risk exposure for the purpose of determining regulatory capital, introduced under Basel II. We also provide a novel analysis of any bias in spill-over and we show that, inter alia, the tendency for greater spill-over of negative sovereign-rating actions can largely be accounted for by firm- and sovereign-level factors. However, even after allowing for these factors, some countries suffer from negative bias. The implied higher correlation between sovereign and firm-level ratings in times when countries are in crisis versus when they are in recovery may contribute to quicker and/or deeper crises versus slower and/or longer recoveries.     

PERSONALITY BIASES OF ACCOUNTING STUDENTS: SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR LEARNING STYLE PREFERENCES

This paper reviews the evidence of a Myers-Briggs personality type bias for accounting students, A survey of a sample of accounting majors in three Australian universities supports the overseas evidence that there appears to be a strong tendency for accounting students to have common preferences on three of the four Myers-Briggs dimensions. The findings of this research suggest that while significant diversity is still evident, there is a bias in the Myers-Briggs personality profiles of accounting students towards preferences for sensation over intuition, thinking over feeling, and judgment over perception. Research in psychology and education has shown that different Myers-Briggs personality preferences are associated with significant differences in how people prefer to learn, and the types of learning experiences under which they perform best, that is personality types are associated with distinct learning styles. These outcomes suggest that accounting educators should cater to the variety of personality types among their students by adopting a diversified teaching approach. Such an approach should provide a balance of learning experiences and teaching strategies by attempting to challenge the weaknesses of the personality bias of accounting students in the intuition, feeling and perception areas, and building upon their strengths in the sensation, thinking and judgment areas.     

Inefficiency in Analysts' Earnings Forecasts: Systematic Misreaction or Systematic Optimism?

A rational analysis of analyst behavior predicts that analysts immediately and without bias incorporate information into their forecasts. Several studies document analysts' tendency to systematically underreact to information. Underreaction is inconsistent with rationality. Other studies indicate that analysts systematically overreact to new information or that they are systematically optimistic. This study discriminates between these three hypotheses by examining the interaction between the nature of information and the type of reaction by analysts. The evidence indicates that analysts underreact to negative information, but overreact to positive information. These results are consistent with systematic optimism in response to information.     

Properties of foreign exchange risk premiums

We study the properties of foreign exchange risk premiums that can explain the forward bias puzzle, defined as the tendency of high-interest rate currencies to appreciate rather than depreciate. These risk premiums arise endogenously from the no-arbitrage condition relating the term structure of interest rates and exchange rates. Estimating affine (multi-currency) term structure models reveals a noticeable tradeoff between matching depreciation rates and accuracy in pricing bonds. Risk premiums implied by our global affine model generate unbiased predictions for currency excess returns and are closely related to global risk aversion, the business cycle, and traditional exchange rate fundamentals.     

Do investors hold that they know? Impact of familiarity bias on investor’s reluctance to realize losses: Experimental approach

In this article we investigate the impact of familiarity bias on the individual investor’s reluctance to realize losses. Our experimental approach reveals a strong correlation between familiarity and disposition effect. We conducted 714 tests in which different respondents could sell stocks of two types – winners and losers. One group of respondents “owned” familiar assets and another group operated anonymous portfolios. The results of the experiment show that an individual investor’s tendency to ride losers too long is more than twice as high in the case of unfamiliar stocks as it is when assets are familiar to the holder.     

Provincial preferences in private equity

This paper identifies a strong tendency for Canadian private equity investors to finance entrepreneurs that reside in the same province. For all types of investors and entrepreneurial firms, in terms of the number of investments (13,729 transactions), 84.42% of investments were intra-provincial. In terms of the total value of these transactions ($20,193,896,909 in 1997 dollars), 61.15% of the investment value was intra-provincial. We provide evidence that both agency costs and information asymmetries systematically give rise to differences in the frequency of inter- versus intra-provincial investments, and compare the importance of agency versus institutional factors leading to home bias.      

少数民族大学生思想道德状况分析及教育对策——以呼伦贝尔学院为例

在新形势下,由于市场经济体制的负面影响、高等教育改革的浪潮、互联网的冲击以及学生自身道德心理的不成熟等原因,我院少数民族大学生政治思想上存在功利倾向,在道德评价和实践上存在偏差。因此,要深入了解少数民族学生思想实际,正确把握他们的个性特点,改进德育方法和途径,引导少数民族学生树立正确的世界观、人生观和价值观,形成良好道德品质。     

Rational and behavioral motives to trade: Evidence from reinvestment of dividends and tender offer proceeds

We provide evidence of households’ stock market trading in response to clearly identifiable positive cash flow shocks: dividend payments and tender offer proceeds. Transaction cost motives appear important, and there is some support for rational portfolio rebalancing and life cycle considerations as well. Households’ tendency to reinvest is low, even for large and unexpected dividend payments. This is consistent with a default choice bias, and is not due to dividend clientele effects. Reinvestment of tender offer proceeds is significantly higher, controlling for other important factors. This is consistent with mental accounting, i.e., cash flows from different sources are treated differently.     

The informativeness of analyst forecast revisions and the valuation of R&D-intensive firms

Prior studies (e.g., [McNichols and O’Brien, 1997] and [Diether et al., 2002]) find that analysts are less willing to disclose unfavorable earnings forecasts than to disclose favorable forecasts, and this tendency induces an optimistic bias in disclosed forecasts that increases with the degree of earnings uncertainty. Building on these findings, we predict that, in the context of R&D-intensive industries, there should be differential informativeness and asymmetric valuation roles for upward versus downward analyst forecast revisions. Consistent with our predictions, we find the following evidence: (i) analyst forecast revisions contain a downward bias, causing upward revisions to under-represent, whereas downward revisions to over-represent, changes in true earnings expectations, with the extent of over/under-representation greater for firms with higher R&D expenditures; (ii) upward revisions are associated with more rapid reductions in earnings uncertainties (proxied by forecast dispersions) than downward revisions, mainly for high R&D firms; and (iii) upward revisions are more effective in mitigating the return differentials between high and low R&D firms (as documented in Chan et al., 2001).     

The role of language connectedness in reducing home bias in trade,investment, information,and people flows

This study introduces the concept of a country’s language connectedness (LC), namely, the extent to which the country is connected to the rest of the world in terms of the number of potential communicative partners. LC depends on the extent to which the country’s languages are spoken outside that country. Operationalizing and constructing an index capturing LC, I empirically show that a country’s LC is strongly associated with its globalization level. This effect is particularly strong in cross-border trade and investment and information flows. I also find that countries with languages belonging to large linguistic families (i.e., countries with greater linguistic connectedness) are more globalized. This study presents language barriers as a key contributor to home bias, that is, the tendency toward more within-border than cross-border interactions.     

Hedging, Familiarity and Portfolio Choice

We exploit the restrictions of intertemporal portfolio choicein the presence of nonfinancial income risk to test hedgingusing the information contained in the actual portfolio of theinvestor. We use a unique data set of Swedish investors withinformation broken down at the investor level and into variouscomponents of investor wealth, income, and demographic characteristics.Portfolio holdings are identified at the stock level. We showthat investors do not hedge but invest in stocks closely relatedto their nonfinancial income. We explain this with familiarity,that is, the tendency to concentrate holdings in stocks to whichthe investor is geographically or professionally close or thathe has held for a long period. We show that familiarity is nota behavioral bias, but is information driven. Familiarity-basedinvestment allows investors to earn higher returns than theywould have otherwise earned if they had hedged.     

The Association between Trading Recommendations and Broker-Analysts' Earnings Forecasts

This study examines analyst forecast errors within the context of stock recommendations. We predict positive forecast error (i.e., optimism) for buy recommendations and negative forecast error (i.e., pessimism) for sell recommendations. We offer two explanations for this prediction: (1) the unconscious tendency to process information in a manner that supports one's goal, which we refer to as the "objectivity illusion" hypothesis, and (2) the economic incentive to boost trade, which we refer to as the "trade boosting" hypothesis. The pattern of analyst forecast bias we predict (i.e., optimism for buys and pessimism for sells) is opposite in direction to that predicted by the management relations hypothesis—a commonly cited hypothesis for analyst forecast bias.
We find broker-analyst earnings forecast errors are significantly optimistic for buy recommendations and significantly pessimistic for sell recommendations, consistent with the objectivity illusion and trade boosting hypotheses. Our study indicates that the pattern of results reported in prior research (i.e., increasingly optimistic earnings forecasts as the stock recommendation becomes less favorable) is likely driven by a correlated omitted variable, actual earnings. Results of an analysis to distinguish between trade boosting and objectivity illusion appear more consistent with the objectivity illusion.     

What drives individual investors in the bear market?

This study uses a unique dataset from a large anonymous brokerage firm to examine the net investment of individual investors during a bear market. The study's empirical evidence reveals that individual investors provide liquidity by acting as net buyers. Particularly, male and younger investors tend to have a higher buying intensity than the others during the market downturn. Besides, better performances when the market crashed encourage investors to be overconfident, thus exhibiting self-attribution bias since we do not find similar results in the bull-market subsample. Results from the stock-level analysis imply that investors tend to buy stocks with worse short-term past performance, higher liquidity, and larger market capitalization. Our findings on the individual investor trading behaviour cannot be explained by either a superior stock-picking ability or a higher tendency to gamble during the market downswing.     

The role of audit thresholds in the misreporting of private information

The accounting profession has faced considerable criticism in recent years for failing to effectively combat reporting manipulation. A particular point of contention is the use of audit thresholds. The tendency for auditors to suppress inconsistencies that are deemed immaterial has been viewed as an open invitation for abuse. This paper revisits the effectiveness of audits and the misreporting of private information in light of audit thresholds. The paper demonstrates that while audit thresholds may create incentives for misstatements, the predictability of such misstatements may actually serve to promote efficiency. In effect, an environment in which parties are expected to systematically bias their reports can bring the threat of audit consequences for further exaggeration to the forefront. Such a consideration also suggests that more relaxed audit thresholds (and the ensuing increase in equilibrium misstatements) may be condoned by report recipients and can actually lessen inefficiencies wrought by adverse selection.