Do social factors influence investment behavior and performance? Evidence from mutual fund holdings

We study the economic significance of social dimensions in investment decisions by analyzing the holdings of U.S. equity mutual funds over the period 2004–2012. Using these holdings, we measure funds’ exposures to socially sensitive stocks in order to answer two questions. What explains cross-sectional variation in mutual funds’ exposure to controversial companies? Does exposure to controversial stocks drive fund returns? We find that exposures to socially sensitive stocks are weaker for funds that aim to attract socially conscious and institutional investor clientele, and they relate to local political and religious factors. The financial payoff associated with greater “sin” stock exposure is positive and statistically significant, but becomes non-significant with broader definitions of socially sensitive investments. Despite the positive relation between mutual fund return and sin stock exposure, the annualized risk-adjusted return spread between a portfolio of funds with highest sin stock exposure and its lowest-ranked counterpart is statistically not significant. The results suggest that fund managers do not tilt heavily towards controversial stocks because of social considerations and practical constraints.     

试析中国证券市场T+1交易制度改革

中国证券市场曾经实行过T+0交易制度,由于存在过度投机T+0被取消,进而推出了T+1交易制度。2010年之后,股指期货等金融衍生产品的推出标志着中国证券改革正走向纵深,T+1交易制度已经不再适应中国资本市场的重大变化,特别是光大“8·16”乌龙事件中,机构利用股指期货和ETF变相T+0交易规避风险,市场的公平与效率亟待维护和提升。为此,本文提出在沪深300成分股中率先实行T+0制度的渐次改革原则及其三大理由。     

我国上市公司财务频繁舞弊的症结研究

通过对我国上市公司以增发新股为目的的财务舞弊现象进行分析，我们发现，大股东不仅是舞弊收益的获得者，而且还是舞弊通道的制造者，而大股东的存在又是股票流通性不够的结果。因此，非流通股的存在是我国上市公司财务舞弊的症结所在。     

Global financial crisis and dependence risk analysis of sector portfolios: a vine copula approach

We use regular vine (r-vine), canonical vine (c-vine) and drawable vine (d-vine) copulas to examine the dependence risk characteristics of three 20-stock portfolios from the retail, manufacturing and gold-mining equity sectors of the Australian market in periods before, during and after the 2008–2009 global financial crisis (GFC). Our results indicate that the retail portfolio is less risky than the manufacturing counterpart in the crisis period, while the gold-mining portfolio is less risky than both the retail and manufacturing sector portfolios. Both the retail and gold stocks display a higher propensity to yield positively skewed returns in the crisis periods, contrary to the manufacturing stocks. The r-vine is found to best capture the multivariate dependence structure of the stocks in the retail and gold-mining portfolios, while the d-vine does it for the manufacturing stock portfolio. These findings could be used to develop dependence risk- and investment risk-adjusted strategies for investment, rebalancing and hedging which more adequately account for the downside risk in various market conditions.     

Can investors of Chinese energy stocks benefit from diversification into commodity futures?

We attempt to evaluate the diversification potential of commodity futures for energy stocks in China. With a variety of copula functions and three risk-based dynamic measures, our results show that even though commodity futures are not helpful in improving the risk-adjusted returns of energy stocks, they can significantly reduce the volatilities and expected-shortfalls of the diversified portfolios. Such diversification benefits are much larger during large market downturns than during normal times. In particular, gold (copper) futures are the most (least) attractive in diversifying risks of energy stocks in most cases. The results also highlight that the non-linear dependence cannot be ignored when estimating the diversification benefits, and more various risk hedging strategies are expected for investors holding energy stocks, especially coal company stocks.     

Do Institutional and Individual Investors Differ in Their Preference for Financial Skewness?

Employing a unique sample of individual and institutional investors, we conduct experiments to determine investors’ preference for (or indifference to) financial skewness. We present investors with a series of stocks with varying levels of skewness. Using Instant Response Devices, we then collect investors’ choices to hold or sell each stock. Among stocks with equal expected returns, we find strong evidence that the sample investors use a prospect theory utility function rather than a mean-variance expected utility function to decide to sell or hold stocks. In the loss domain, we find that investors are ambivalent about the choice between positively and negatively skewed stocks. However, in the gain domain, we find that both individual and institutional investors prefer negatively skewed stocks—a contrast from previous research suggesting that individuals (and not institutional investors) prefer positive skewness. We also find evidence suggesting that reference points are important in financial decision making.     

EU Emission Allowances and the stock market: Evidence from the electricity industry

This paper constitutes - to our best knowledge - the first econometric analysis on stock market effects of the EU Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS). Our results suggest that EU Emission Allowance (EUA) price developments matter to the stock performance of electricity firms: EUA price changes and stock returns of the most important European electricity corporations are shown to be positively related. This effect does not work asymmetrically, so that stock markets do not seem to react differently to EUA appreciations in comparison to depreciations. The carbon market effect is shown to be both time- and country-specific: It is particularly strong for the period of EUA market shock in early 2006, and differs with respect to the countries where the electricity corporations analysed are headquartered. Stock market reactions to EUA volatility could not be shown.     

Do demand curves for stocks slope down?: Evidence from aggregate data

We examine whether the aggregate demand curve for stocks is downward sloping. As a proxy for aggregate demand, we use net outflows (dividends plus repurchases less net issues) from the stock market scaled by the previous year's market capitalization. To disentangle the information and price pressure effects from the demand curve effects, we use an information-free demographic variable as an instrument and look at the relation between annual changes in aggregate demand and excess market return. We find that information-free changes in the annual aggregate demand for stocks do not lead to changes in the annual excess market return. This finding supports long-term horizontal demand curves for stocks.     

论企业高管股权激励有效性

企业高管股票期权激励制度已成为人们关注的焦点。依据股权激励的内在机理,结合我国股票期权激励的制度基础,在重新审视相关制约因素的基础上,从提升股票期权激励的有效性角度,提出了完善绩效评价体系、切实解决"内部人控制"与审慎处理期权费用化、尽快调整股权激励的税收政策等相关措施与政策建议。     

Exploring the dynamic spillover of cryptocurrency environmental attention across the commodities,green bonds,and environment-related stocks

We analyze the dynamic spillover impact of cryptocurrency environmental attention (ICEA) on three asset classes: commodities, green bonds (GBs), and environment-related stocks. Our wavelet-based analysis suggests that ICEA is sharply escalated after the first quarter of 2021. During this period of intense attention, only the soybean commodity and Solactive GB tend to move positively and negatively with ICEA, respectively. Accordingly, the clean energy, sustainability, and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) stock indices are positively associated with ICEA during 2018–2019 at the medium frequency bands. In most periods and frequency domains, most commodities, GBs, and environment-related stocks are not strongly linked to ICEA. Moreover, Diebold and Yilmaz’s (2014) spillover estimations signify no strong spillover effect of ICEA on the asset classes considered in this study. These findings are further corroborated by the wavelet-based Granger causality analysis. Moreover, our quantile regression (QR) estimations suggest that most assets are adversely influenced by ICEA, depending on the market conditions. Our research conveys some novel and vital policy ramifications to both investors and policymakers.