Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Socially Responsible Investing Strategies under Pressure: Evidence from COVID-19

By matching socially responsible (SR) stock indices worldwide with their conventional benchmarks, we study the resilience of SR investment strategies during the COVID-19 crisis. Overall, SR indices exhibited dynamics very similar to their benchmarks. Our sample is composed of 573 SR stock indices from MSCI, STOXX, and FTSE. In the first half of 2020, the average daily return was –0.11% for SR indices and their benchmarks, with annualized volatility of 40% for each. SR indices remained very close to their benchmarks during both the “fever period” (Feb. 24-Mar. 20) and the “rebound period” (Mar. 23-May 29). However, financial performances of SR strategies exhibit substantial heterogeneity: SR impact strategies slightly out-performed their benchmarks. In addition, the resilience of SR strategies was a little stronger in countries where and during periods when the number of COVID-19 cases increased. In robustness checks, we control for public attention to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the economic effects of new policies implemented during the crisis, including lockdowns, and fiscal and monetary policy changes. These findings call for a selective investment strategy by SR investors if they expect that their preferences also deliver financial outperformance in times of crisis.
Comparison of Psychosocial Factors Affecting the Demands for Pension Plans Between American and Chinese Residents

Pension becomes more and more important as people are living longer and pursuing higher living quality after retirement. This paper is to analyze the psychosocial factors that affect people’s pension demands in the US as well as in China. As two representative countries that have different pension systems, cultures, value systems, family structures, and age compositions, we identify the commonalities and differences involving in people’s pension decisions with a phenomenological qualitative method. American and Chinese residents’ experiences in pension selection and management are studied through in-depth interviews. While the existing studies focus on the macrostructure of a country’s pension system, we contribute to the literature by recognizing the micro influential factors at the individual level. Our analysis provides constructive suggestions and valuable implications to the policymakers who aim to amend an existing pension system, construct a new pension system, or carry out a pension reform.
Words and Numbers: Financialization and Accounting Standard Setting in the UK

How is it possible that British policy makers resisted market-based measurement for decades while financial economic concepts of decision-making and valuation still gained widespread acceptance as a justification for accounting standard-setting? This study introduces the concept of “technologies of financialization” to develop the theorizing of the rise of finance in the domain of accounting. Based on a genealogical history of narrative reporting in the UK, it demonstrates how references to qualitative reporting techniques helped to address recurring crises of measurement from 1969 to 1993, and ultimately contributed to the practical acceptance of market-based measurement in the UK standard-setting context. The data is interpreted through a cultural economy framework that directs attention to the power of referring to financial reporting as a combination of words and numbers in sustaining its theoretical redefinition “from below,” that is, by relating it to the experience of practicing accountants rather than accounting theory. As a technology of financialization, narrative reporting made financial economic ideals of market-based measurement, decision usefulness, and future orientation appear operable in a real-life reporting context. Whenever measurement reached its practical limits, narratives were relied on to explain the impact of price-level changes, frame economic decisions, and relate unobservable future cash flows to present-day strategies and resources. The insight into how narrative reporting practices have been laced into the reasoning of capital markets for over 40 years is timely because it encourages to think that narratives can also play a more encompassing role and drive the turn towards wider corporate accountability on social and environmental impacts while hard measurements in this area are still being figured out.
Financial Autonomy Among Emerging Adults in Australia

This paper investigates how financial autonomy develops in young adults and under what circumstances that development process is hastened or hindered. The paper uses longitudinal data from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey for persons aged 15-25, thus following young people from the time they are adolescents and into adulthood. We develop a novel measure of financial autonomy based on an individual’s degree of responsibility for household decision-making related to (a) managing day-to-day spending, (b) making large household purchases, and (c) savings and investments. Measuring financial autonomy allows us to observe a period of “emerging adulthood” as opposed to merely delaying nest-leaving due to cost-constraints (i.e. costs of living). If emerging adulthood plays an important role in young adults’ development, we would expect to see steadily increasing levels of financial autonomy while the young adults are still at home. If on the other hand, delayed nest-leaving is only due to costs-constraints, we would not expect to observe such a period of systematic preparation for independent living. We estimate a correlated random-effects model for the latent financial autonomy construct, specifying a range of covariates related to individual demographic and resource characteristics, household characteristics, and regional factors. For men, there is a significant and positive age gradient associated with financial autonomy. There is no evidence of an age profile for young women whose level of financial autonomy is mostly explained by their household- and regional characteristics. This suggests that the phase of “emerging adulthood”, in which financial autonomy is learned over time at home, plays an important role for young men but not for young women. This systematically puts young women at a potential disadvantage compared to young men, and consequently at a higher risk of low financial literacy and poor financial decision-making in the period after nest-leaving.
Consumer Behavior in ‘Groupon’ Business Model in Vietnam Market- the Case of www.cungmua.com

In Viet Nam market, the “Groupon” business model has its own advantages such as competitive price, production information channel for consumer, advertising channel for small and medium companies, shops or restaurants. This research aims to find out the information about important factors affecting buying consumer behavior in “Groupon” business model which is developed in Vietnam recently, especially at www.cungmua.com. <br><br>The multiple regression analysis shows that trust, convenience and price are significant elements affecting intention of consumer in online purchase of “Groupon” business model, in which trust is the most important factor, followed by convenience, then price. The marketing and management team of cungmua.com can utilize these findings when planning marketing strategies. The study also provides solutions and recommendations to make improvements for the company.
Does Confidence Bias Exist in Indian Stock Market?

There has been growing literature on trading volume and overconfidence bias in the stock market. The common phenomenon in global financial markets is high trading volume and the most prominent explanation for this excess trading is overconfidence bias. This paper attempts to examine whether overconfidence bias exists in the Indian stock market. For this, we construct a vector autoregression model (VAR) and impulse response function (IRF) to test the relationship between turnover and return. We also test the presence of overconfidence bias for the pre and post-crisis periods. Our result confirms the overconfidence of the investors in Indian stock market.
Surplus Men and Scarce Women - The Impact of Mating Competition on the Desire for Sons in China

We conducted this research to explore the possible factors shaping son preference, with a view to understanding the persistently high male/female sex ratio. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) and the Population Census of China, we find a significant impact of regional sex ratio on people’s preferences for the sex of their future children. Specifically, the extent of son preference decreases with the increase in the male/female sex imbalance in the local area. We also find that sex imbalance has a positive impact on a wide range of outcomes that capture the pressure on males to enter marriage markets, such as regional housing prices, the number of houses owned, and family economic status. This result is consistent with the view that greater sex imbalance exerts larger pressure on men in the marriage market, leading to changes in son preference. Omitted variable bias is addressed by using climate changes in the month preceding fertilization period as an instrument for sex ratio. Instrumental sex ratio negatively impacts son preference, offering strong support for our hypothesis.
A Bullshit Job? A Global Study on the Value of CEOs

This paper presents strong evidence that existing studies overestimate the impact of CEOs on the performance of the firms they lead. Ours is a comprehensive study of more than 3,692 CEOs in 2,103 firms in 22 countries, and for the period 1991-2019. Our objective is to assess the direct impact of CEOs on firm results--measured as Total Shareholder Return and ROIC--after controlling for global, country, industry, and firm effects. Like the previous literature, we find that a CEO dummy explains 2 percent of the variability of stock returns, and 12 percent of the variability in firms' return on invested capital. However, we show that such relationship is driven by CEOs having an average impact that is economically unimportant, with some CEOs positively affecting performance, and some others destroying value. In fact, analyzing results for the best and worst performing firms, we find that CEOs only improve value in good companies, but destroy value in underperforming firms. Additionally, there is no firm or CEO characteristic (except for CEO tenure) that systematically explains their impact on performance: characteristics such as gender, age, and compensation do not make a difference. This suggest that firms hire top executives for reasons different from their inherent ability to contribute to performance, so CEOs end up doing well only if their firms do well, but not vice versa.
Earnings Conservatism and Litigation Exposure in the Banking Industry

This paper examines the effect of managers’ liability exposure on earnings conservatism in the banking industry. Focusing on a wide international sample of commercial banks and using TIER1 as a proxy of bank managers’ exposure to litigation, our results show a negative relationship between the level of TIER1 and earnings conservatism. We interpret these results as evidence of an increase in bank managers’ liability exposure increasing earnings conservatism. Moreover, we find that this negative relationship holds for both, those banks with a TIER1 below the median country level of TIER1 (low-TIER1 banks) and those with a TIER1 above the median country level of TIER1 (high-TIER1 banks), even though it is less pronounced for the former group. Thus, although it is expected that higher public scrutiny scenarios in the banking industry (low-TIER1 banks) trigger a higher degree of unconditional conservatism, they do not prevent managers from resorting to earnings conservatism in an attempt to minimize not only litigation costs but also the likelihood of adverse political action.
Dynamic Fairness in Repeated Bargaining with Ex Post Risk

We study dynamic notions of fairness via an experiment of a two-round bilateral bargaining environment, where the payoff to one player is subject to ex-post risk, while the other player receives a fixed payment, effectively making the player exposed to risk a residual claimant. The ex-post risk not only provides substantive issues for bargaining parties to resolve in the experiment – i.e. what is a fair compensation for the exposure to risk – it also results in the endogenous formation of reference points for the second round due to ex post inequality after the realization of uncertainty in the first round. We find support for a "payback'' hypothesis. That is, agreements in the second round significantly differ from the first round in a manner consistent with reducing the inequality that arose due to the initial pie realization.
Is Ethicality Good for Business: The Effects of Various Subconscious Contextual Cues/Priming of politeness, rudeness, and Moral Identity, on Business Ethical Perceptions and Subsequent Effect in Improving the Moral Concern for Stakeholders

This study aims to determine that if an individual’s perceptions and actions could be altered when exposed to subtle contextual cues and does that affect their ethicality and concern for stakeholders. In business, the role of morality and intuitions have been increasingly inferred in decision making and operations, but this process is done without conscious awareness of individuals, as it is considered being a part of their personality and ideology about things. To achieve the desired type of ethical thinking and behavior from individuals, we performed this study in three parts; the First stage was priming under four conditions (politeness, moral identity, rudeness, and neutral) then examining their ethical perceptions over different scenarios, secondly, we access the presence of effects of priming on the stakeholders that people account responsible for the ethical or unethical decisions in business. And Thirdly, we aim to assess if the ethicality of individuals has a significant impact on the span of stakeholders’ concerns in a (un)ethical business scenario. For the collection of data, we divided our respondents into four groups (politeness, moral identity, rudeness, and neutral, four types of questionnaires were being filled, 50 from each of the sample groups making it a total of 200 samples. Data were analyzed using One-way ANOVA, confirmatory factor analysis, and structured equation modeling. Results suggested that positive priming makes individuals more ethical than neutral as well as negative priming groups, also they will consider a larger span of stakeholders while decision making. Confirmatory factor analysis shows that most of our indicators are good predictors of the target variable. In SEM we used Multi-Group Analysis to determine group-specific effects on the span of stakeholders and concluded that group “neutral” and the group “politeness” shows a significant difference from other groups while considering the span of stakeholders' concerns, given ethical scenarios and unethical scenarios respectively. The findings imply that we can use priming as a tool for self-education and training to enhance our ethicality, as considering a larger span of stakeholders while taking business decisions will always prove profitable for the organizations.
Determinants of the Method of Payment in M&A Transactions: Updated Evidence

The method of payment choice in merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions has been the subject of much research in the finance literature. Recent contributions have highlighted important changes in the economic environment of acquirers in the U.S., in particular (i) the abolishment of pooling of interest in June 2001, (ii) a persistent policy of low interest rates following the September 11th terrorist attacks and the bursting of the housing and Internet bubbles, and (iii) the sustained increase in the activity of private buyers (e.g., private equity) during the last two decades. These changes motivate us to update the set of stylized facts about the method of payment in M&As. The main takeaway from our analyses is that financial constraints are an important factor motivating acquirers to include stock (at least partially) in the compensation package in M&A transactions in the recent period. Also, ownership and control do not appear to be nearly as important in the U.S. context as the extant literature imagines.
Are IPO Underwriters Paid for the Services They Provide?

More reputable underwriters are paid more for taking companies public, because they are expected to provide a better service. However, independently from their reputation, underwriters provide different optional services to the firms they take public. We question whether the services provided are related to the gross spreads. Based on declarations in the prospectuses of Italian IPOs, we find that asking underwriters to stabilize the price does increase the spread. Issuers can therefore pay lower fees by facing the risk of no aftermarket support for their stocks. Conversely, liquidity support does not drive the spread. We further investigate whether the underwriters’ declarations are actually pursued, and find that in general, they do seem to act according to the issuers’ interests. Nevertheless, the fees charged are not informative about the provision of these services. Rather, other factors such as negative price revisions and negative (or low) underpricing drive the provision of these services.
Does Feedback Matter? The Impact of Incentive Type and Feedback on Creativity

Accounting research on the effects of incentives on creativity finds that paying for quantity of output yields the same level of high-creativity output as paying for only creativity or for both creativity and quantity (Kachelmeier et al. 2008). This finding is surprising and counter to economic theory, which suggest multi-dimensional performance measurement systems should lead to superior performance. However, research thus far has not examined whether the results hold up in the context of feedback. Feedback has the potential to change the effect of performance dependent incentives on creativity because it informs individuals about the success (or failure) of their prior task completion strategies. We use an experiment to investigate how feedback and incentive type influence creativity in a two-round setting. Our study examines the effect of feedback on output when incentives are fixed or incentivize either creativity-only, quantity-only, or quantity and creativity. We find that, after feedback, incentives with a quantity component (e.g., quantity-only and quantity and creativity incentives) result in superior production of high-creativity output compared to fixed or creativity-only incentives.
What Can Explain the Hump-Shaped Job Search Intensities Over the Life-Cycle?

This paper explores the puzzling inverted U-shape job search profile for U.S. data. It is well established that the standard life-cycle incomplete market model is incapable of explaining this phenomenon because of the wealth effect. I argue two channels to explain the puzzle: (i) the resolution of perceived risks through Bayesian learning, and (ii) wealth accumulation in the incomplete market over the life-cycle. To support this, I empirically and analytically show that unemployed job seekers devote less efforts to find jobs under higher uncertainty and wealth.
Impact of Lottery Play Decisions on Consumer and Retailer Earnings

We quantify the extent to which lottery spending, play timing, game choice, and number selection vary with players’ level of income, and how such variations affect their earnings and ticket retailers’ revenues. While prior research has shown that poorer consumers spend a higher proportion of their income on lottery tickets, we focus on identifying income-driven differences in consumer lottery decisions on when and how to play and quantifying the impact of these differences on consumers’ earnings and retailers’ revenues across different income areas. Using both market and transactional lottery data, we find that consumers in low-income areas have a preference for games with lower payouts and are less likely to switch between games with jackpot size changes. Further, we find that players in low-income areas are more likely to choose numbers manually and select popular number combinations; these preferences result in lower expected earnings. Overall, these differences in preferences over lottery play lead to players in low-income areas losing 10% more per ticket than those in high-income areas. Lottery retailers’ revenues in poorer areas are 45% lower than for those in higher-income areas, and they earn 0.19% less per ticket, because low-income players prefer games with lower payouts. Our results underscore the need to consider all stages of the consumer decision process when evaluating the economic impact of lotteries on consumers and retailers alike.
US monetary policy uncertainty and RMB deviations from covered interest parity

Abstract This paper examines how US monetary policy uncertainty (MPU) affects RMB deviations from covered interest parity (CIP) and how this effect is influenced by China’s capital controls, the RMB exchange rate regime, and international reserves that constrain the transmitting channel of US MPU shocks. Our findings show that US MPU has a spill-over effect and creates deviations from RMB CIP. Capital controls insulate uncertainty shocks and alleviate the US MPU spill-over effect. There are some evidence that international reserves alleviate and the liberalised RMB exchange rate regime magnifies the spill-over effect. However, their effects become insignificant in the presence of capital controls. Moreover, the US MPU effect on RMB CIP deviations becomes prominent after the 2008 global financial crisis.
The Influence of Agency Conflict Types I and II on Earnings Management

This study examined the influence of agency conflict Type I (as represented by managerial ownership and institutional ownership), and agency conflict Type II (as represented by Control Rights, Cash Flow Rights, Cash Flow Rights leverage) on earnings management. A model was developed and tested using a sample of 108 pyramidal structure companies listed on Indonesian Stock Exchange from 2008 to 2012. Data were collected and analysed using least square regression model. The result showed that there is a significant association between managerial ownership and Control Rights. However, Control Rights (in agency conflict Type II) have the greatest influence on earnings management. Consequently, Type II agency conflict have the largest influence on earnings management compared to Type I agency conflict. The significance of the study is the potentials to assist the institutions and investors know the actual company performance and provides a better understanding of the agency theory more broadly vis-a-vis the relative impacts of Type I and Type II agency conflicts.
The Option to Pay Attention

We use a novel and unique dataset to measure attention to securities—individuals’ stock-following over time (watchlists)—to provide evidence that attention to securities reacts differently to various types of uncertainty. We find that market-wide uncertainty, measured by the VIX index, depresses overall attention to securities. However, the effect of firm-level uncertainty on attention to securities is more subtle. Viewing the decision to follow a security as a real option, we provide evidence that an increase in firm-specific risk (ambiguity), which increases (reduces) option value, increases (reduces) attention to a security. We also find that peer firms serve as substitutes for attention allocation.