Glück — Die Sicht der Ökonomie

Glück führte lange Zeit ein Schattendasein in der ?konomischen Forschung. Das hat sich seit einigen Jahren ge?ndert. Aus den neuen Erkenntnissen zu den wirtschaftlichen und au?erwirtschaftlichen Bestimmungsgründen des Glücks werden auch Empfehlungen für eine Wirtschaftspolitik abgeleitet, die das pers?nliche und gesellschaftliche Glück der Menschen berücksichtigt. Bruno S. Frey und Claudia Frey Marti fassen in diesem Beitrag ihr Buch¹ zu dem Thema zusammen.     

A tale of two prices: Liquidity and asset prices in multiple markets

This paper investigates the liquidity effect in asset pricing by studying the liquidity–premium relationship of an American depositary receipt (ADR) and its underlying share. Using the [Amihud, Yakov, 2002. Illiquidity and stock returns: cross-section and time series effects. Journal of Financial Markets 5, 31–56] measure, the turnover ratio and trading infrequency as proxies for liquidity, we show that a higher ADR premium is associated with higher ADR liquidity and lower home share liquidity, in terms of changes in these variables. We find that the liquidity effects remain strong after we control for firm size and a number of country characteristics, such as the expected change in the foreign exchange rate, the stock market performance, as well as several variables measuring the openness and transparency of the home market.     

When does Strategic Debt-service Matter?

Recent work in corporate finance has suggested that strategic debt-service by equity-holders works to lower debt values and raise yield spreads substantially. We show that this is not quite correct. With optimal cash management, defaults occassioned by deliberate underperformance (strategic defaults) and those forced by inadequate cash (liquidity defaults) work as substitutes: allowing for strategic debt-service leads to a decline in the equilibrium likelihood of liquidity defaults. In some cases, this decline is sufficiently sharp that equilibrium debt values actually increase and yield spreads decline. We provide an intuitive explanation for these results in terms of an interaction of optionalitiesExpanded versions of this paper were presented in conferences and seminars at the Scottish Institute for Research in Finance, European Finance Association, Western Finance Association, Financial Management Association, 10th Derivative Securities Conference, Santa Clara University, Virginia Tech, the Norwegian School of Management, the Norwegian School of Business and Economics, Duke University, and Carnegie-Mellon University. We benefitted greatly from the comments of participants at these seminars and would particularly like to thank Francesca Cornelli, Kose John, Pete Kyle, Sanjay Unni, and Raman Uppal in this context     

Examining the behavior of renewable‐energy fund investors

Mutual fund investors could contribute to sustainable development by encouraging fund managers to channel their savings into the funding of sustainable energy projects adopted by firms. This study examines whether renewable‐energy investors take into account financial and/or nonfinancial factors when making the decision to invest in a specific fund, comparing their investment behavior with that of black‐energy and conventional investors. To this end, we have gathered information about 4,368 mutual funds (76 renewable‐energy funds, 109 black‐energy funds, and 4,183 conventional mutual funds) from January 2007 to December 2017. For this sample, we adopt a panel‐data approach with Petersen's standard errors clustered by fund and year. Our results indicate that renewable‐energy fund investors are less sensitive to past financial performance than are black‐energy and conventional fund investors, indicating that the former derive their utility from nonfinancial attributes whereas black‐energy investors derive their utility from a conditional multiattribute and conventional fund investors derive their utility from financial attributes.