Feasible momentum strategies: Evidence from the Swiss stock market

While there is little controversy on the profitability of momentum strategies, their implementation is afflicted with many difficulties. Most important, chasing momentum can generate high turnover. Though there are already several attempts to make momentum strategies less expensive with respect to transaction costs, we go a step further in the simplification of momentum strategies. By restricting our sample to Switzerland’s largest blue-chip stocks and choosing only one winner and one loser stock, we find average returns to our momentum arbitrage portfolios of up to 44% p.a. depending on the formation and holding periods. While unconditional risk models are at odds with momentum profits, stock market predictability and time-varying expected returns explain a large part of the momentum payoffs, including the post-holding period behavior of the winner and loser stocks (overreaction and subsequent price correction).

Performance and Policy of Foundation‐owned Firms in Germany

This paper compares performance and policy of foundation‐owned firms and of listed corporations in Germany. Foundations have no owners so that there exist no individuals with financial ownership claims on firms which are wholly owned by foundations. This suggests weaker outside control of foundation‐owned firms implying lower profitability. The empirical findings show a slightly better performance of foundation‐owned firms compared to corporations. Foundation‐owned firms display higher labour intensity, lower labour productivity, and lower salary levels. This policy promotes job security without endangering the viability of foundation‐owned firms.     

Software reviews

In this paper we focus on the choice that accounting doctoral students from the German-speaking area make, between a future career either in academia or business practice. Based on the results of an online survey, we show that prospective scholars exhibit certain characteristics of passionate researchers more pronouncedly than do future practitioners. The latter group, however, shows more interest in considering practical concerns in their research for the PhD. Furthermore, we show that the impact of institutional incentives is more widespread among future academics. Some implications are drawn for the relationship between research and practice and the future of the accounting academy.     

Insights into Suspicious Online Ratings: Direct Evidence from TripAdvisor

Online ratings and online reputation management are becoming increasingly popular and important. With this increasing importance, attempts to manipulate online reviews through fake reviews have become more prevalent. Suspicious online reviews (ratings) exist on many e-commerce platforms, but these reviews have rarely been observed and reported as manipulation in academic studies using different test methods. In our research, we examine empirical evidence of suspicious online ratings based on 41,572 ratings on TripAdvisor. Applying quantitative analytics, we find three important results: (1) the gap between overall rating and individual ratings does exist and is significant, especially among the lower class hotels; (2) the proportion of suspicious ratings is about 20% at a standard of 0.5; and (3) reviewers who tend to post excellent ratings are less likely to generate big gaps when posting ratings. We offer specific managerial implications for hotel managers on online reputation management and selected suggestions for future research based on the empirical findings.     

Pflegen und gesund bleiben

Beziehungsgestaltung durch empathisches Handeln - Empathie beinhaltet, in jedem Augenblick ein Gespür für die sich ?ndernden, gefühlten Anzeichen des Patienten zu haben. Keine leichte Aufgabe im allt?glichen Stress auf der Station.     

Pricing exotic options in a regime switching economy: a Fourier transform method

This article considers the valuation of digital, barrier, and lookback options in a Markovian, regime-switching, Black–Scholes model. In Fourier space, integral representations for the option prices are derived via the theory on matrix Wiener–Hopf factorizations. Our main focus is on the 2-state case where the matrix Wiener–Hopf factorization is available analytically. A comparison to several numerical alternatives (analytical approximations, the Brownian bridge algorithm and a finite element scheme) demonstrates that the pricing formulas are easy to implement and lead to accurate price estimates.     

Beyond Sharpe ratio: Optimal asset allocation using different performance ratios

As the assumption of normality in return distributions is relaxed, classic Sharpe ratio and its descendants become questionable tools for constructing optimal portfolios. In order to overcome the problem, asymmetrical parameter-dependent performance ratios have been recently proposed in the literature. The aim of this note is to develop an integrated decision aid system for asset allocation based on a toolkit of eleven performance ratios. A multi-period portfolio optimization up covering a fixed horizon is set up: at first, bootstrapping of asset return distributions is assessed to recover all ratios calculations; at second, optimal rebalanced-weights are achieved; at third, optimal final wealth is simulated for each ratios. Eventually, we make a robustness test on the best performance ratios. Empirical simulations confirm the weakness in forecasting of Sharpe ratio, whereas asymmetrical parameter-dependent ratios, such as the Generalized Rachev, Sortino–Satchell and Farinelli–Tibiletti ratios show satisfactorily robustness.     

Bubbles and crashes in a Black�CScholes model with delay

This paper studies the asymptotic behaviour of an affine stochastic functional differential equation modelling the evolution of the cumulative return of a risky security. In the model, the traders of the security determine their investment strategy by comparing short- and long-run moving averages of the security??s returns. We show that the cumulative returns either obey the law of the iterated logarithm, but have dependent increments, or exhibit asymptotic behaviour that can be interpreted as a runaway bubble or crash.     

Marginal consistent dependence modelling using weak subordination for Brownian motions

We present an approach for modelling dependencies in exponential Lévy market models with arbitrary margins originated from time changed Brownian motions. Using weak subordination of Buchmann et al. [Bernoulli, 2017], we face a new layer of dependencies, superior to traditional approaches based on pathwise subordination, since weakly subordinated processes are not required to have independent components considering multivariate stochastic time changes. We apply a subordinator being able to incorporate any joint or idiosyncratic information arrivals. We emphasize multivariate variance gamma and normal inverse Gaussian processes and state explicit formulae for the Lévy characteristics. Using maximum likelihood, we estimate multivariate variance gamma models on various market data and show that these models are highly preferable to traditional approaches. Consistent values of basket-options under given marginal pricing models are achieved using the Esscher transform, generating a non-flat implied correlation surface.     

Is local bias a cross-border phenomenon? Evidence from individual investors’ international asset allocation

Extant literature consistently documents that investors tilt their domestic equity portfolios towards regionally close stocks (local bias). We hypothesize that individual investors’ local bias is not limited to the domestic sphere but instead also determines their international investment decisions. Our results confirm the presence of a cross-border local bias. Specifically, we show (i) that the stockholdings of individual investors living within regional proximity to a foreign country display a significantly lower foreign investment bias towards investment opportunities in that country and (ii) that this drop in foreign investment bias levels is disproportionately driven by investments in regionally close neighbor-country companies. The impact of cross-border local bias on investors’ bilateral foreign equity investments is economically significant and holds even after controlling for previously identified explanations of international asset allocation.