Stakeholder Returns of Islamic Banks Versus Conventional Banks

Sharia principle shaping the Islamic banking model is most determinant on collection and deployment of funds with its ban on interest. This study aims to look at the results of funded activities in isolation for a healthier comparison between Islamic and conventional deposit banks with respect to their financial stakeholders. The differences are reflected as lower asset returns and lower returns for depositors of Islamic banks. These differences sustain throughout normal and crisis periods. Our findings show that despite differences in asset structures and returns, Islamic banks retain similar returns for shareholders to position themselves close to and in competition with their conventional counterparts.     

Market timing: A global endeavor

This paper employs daily fund and index data, the classical Treynor and Mazuy timing model, and two multi-factor extensions to measure the market timing ability of global asset allocation funds. These funds differ from traditional global or international funds in that they face fewer investment constraints and are known to actively shift funds across a wide variety of asset classes. When using the classical Treynor and Mazuy timing models, I find evidence of poor market timing ability. However, this evidence disappears when timing ability is examined using two multi-factor models. The results from Treynor and Mazuy are spurious since both multi-factor extensions do a much better job in explaining the variation in average fund returns.     

公募基金内部羊群行为研究

以往对公募基金羊群行为的研究聚焦于宏观层面不同基金公司所持股票组合的相似性,而该研究则从微观视角研究了羊群行为:(1)单个公募基金公司所管理的多个基金相互模仿投资策略所呈现的羊群行为;(2)基金经理的交易行为所呈现的羊群行为。使用LSV模型测量2010—2019年多个公募基金公司内部的羊群行为,发现同个公募基金公司所管理的多个不同基金存在相互模仿投资策略的羊群行为,程度高于宏观层面不同公募基金之间相互模仿的羊群行为。此外,还发现基金经理的买入卖出交易行为存在羊群效应。研究从新的视角检验了微观层面的羊群行为,为基金公司加强内部管理、避免基金经理跟风投资造成风险聚集提供参考。     

对我国股票型开放式基金的一种业绩评价

为了全面、有效反映基金的综合业绩,本文选取净值收益率、市场风险、Sharp指数、选股能力和择时能力五个指标作为51只股票型开放式基金的业绩评价指标,运用因子分析和聚类分析方法对其进行归类、总结,最终把样本分成具有不同风险和收益特征的五个类别。在为投资者提供更为一目了然的投资导向的同时,得出结论：我国股票型开放式基金总体运行良好,但其分布结构欠佳,且基金经理人的能力有待进一步提高。     

试论中小企业库存材料管理存在的问题及应对措施

材料是指企业在生产过程中为销售或耗用而储备的各种有形资产,是企业存货的主要内容,也是构成资产负债表中流动资产的一个重要项目。因此,材料管理的好坏已成为衡量企业管理制度是否完善、材料储备是否合理、流动资金占用是否最佳的重要标志。     

Learning risk preferences from investment portfolios using inverse optimization

The level of risk an investor can endure, known as risk-preference, is a subjective choice that is tightly related to psychology and behavioral science in decision making. This paper presents a novel approach of measuring risk preference from existing portfolios using inverse optimization on mean–variance portfolio allocation framework. Our approach allows the learner to continuously estimate real-time risk preferences using concurrent observed portfolios and market price data. We demonstrate our methods on robotic investment portfolios and real market data that consists of 20 years of asset pricing and 10 years of mutual fund portfolio holdings. Moreover, the quantified risk preference parameters are validated with two well-known risk measurements currently applied in the field. The proposed methods could lead to practical and fruitful innovations in automated/personalized portfolio management, such as Robo-advising, to augment financial advisors’ decision intelligence in a long-term investment horizon.     

The Performance of Actively Managed International Mutual Funds

International mutual funds allow individual investors to diversify abroad at a reasonable cost. This paper tests whether international funds that actively engage in country and security selection outperform passive global benchmarks. We apply a mean-variance efficiency test that incorporates the practical prohibition against short sales of open-end mutual funds. Our tests reject the efficiency of the world equity market portfolio over the sample period, and our funds as a group outperform the inefficient world index. However, we find no evidence of security selectivity ability using a 12-country benchmark. We do find that active international funds provide global diversification benefits. Tests using the Positive Period Weight (PPW) measure of Grinblatt and Titman (1989), which is robust to nonlinearity in fund and benchmark returns, yield similar results.     

A comparative institutional analysis of agreements on product standards

The WTO and the EU have chosen two different agreements on product standards. While the WTO's approach is primarily based on a “National Treatment” (NT) principle, the EU's approach crucially relies on a principle of “Mutual Recognition” (MR). This paper offers a first look at the comparative performance of these two principles. We show that standards are imposed for levels of externalities that are too low under NT and too high under MR. This suggests that NT should be preferred to MR when the amount of trade in goods characterized by high levels of externalities is large.     

Performance of Ethical Mutual Funds in Spain: Sacrifice or Premium?

There is currently much debate in the economic literature about whether ethical investment involves a financial sacrifice or premium. One of the most common methods of testing this compares the financial performance of ethical investment funds with that of other funds not considered “socially responsible” or ethical. The majority of these research studies evaluate the performance of the ethical funds according to classic measures, whereby different financial markets, in different countries and for different periods of time serve as reference for evaluation. The ultimate conclusion of all of these studies is that there are no significant differences between the performance results of one type of funds and the other. In Spain, ethical investment funds are still an incipient sector of investment. To date, the Spanish market has not been included in any type of analysis of these characteristics. Therefore the main objective of this article is to compare the financial performance of ethical investment funds to that of other funds in the Spanish retail market. We propose the aggregate type of analysis as the Spanish ethical investment funds have experienced a weaker development in comparison to those of other developed countries. In the first step we suggest the financial performance to be compared by style analysis since the asset distribution of the Spanish Social Return Investment (SRI) funds differs from the European trend. In particular, we use the multifactor regression model with style benchmarks. We found that their financial performance is in all cases superior or similar to that achieved by the rest of the funds. In the second step, to achieve a more robust and homogeneous comparison, we used the bootstrap method, comparing ethical and non-ethical fund subsamples by homogeneous groups. No significant differences between these two types of funds have been found. Thus, if we assume the positive o neutral effect of ethical investment on investor utility in the retail Spanish market the financial and social performance (FSP) of ethical funds will be, in aggregate, superior to the FSP achieved by conventional funds. In conclusion, the financial performance of ethical mutual funds in Spain is no sacrifice.