Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance最新文献

The convex time budget (CTB) method is a widely used experimental technique for eliciting an individual’s time preference in intertemporal choice problems. This paper investigates the accuracy of the estimation of the discount factor parameter and the present bias parameter in the quasi-hyperbolic discounted utility function for the CTB experiment. In this paper, we use a simulation technique called “parameter recovery”. We found that the precision of present bias parameter estimation is poor within the range of previously reported parameter estimates, making it difficult to detect the effect of present bias. Our results recommend against using a combination of the CTB experimental task and the quasi-hyperbolic discounted utility model to explore the effect of present bias.

Chinese CEOs with foreign experience tend to engage less in related-party transactions (RPTs). This result holds across various analyses, including firm-fixed effects model estimations, matching on firm and CEO characteristics, additional controls, and instrumental variable regressions. The effect of CEO foreign experience is pronounced for non-state-controlled and non–politically connected firms. The effect is weaker for firms with independent boards and foreign shareholders. Moreover, CEOs exposed to more developed institutional environments tend to reduce RPTs more. Collectively, our findings indicate that CEO foreign experience can enhance corporate governance in emerging markets.

Alongside sustainable finance regulations, the new European Sustainability Reporting Standards introduce the need to disclose carbon target difficulty and the science-based nature of targets to enable better investment decisions. However, investment preferences towards established target attributes and emerging ones like target progress are understudied, especially in impact investments, where they can signal the potential for desired emission reduction beyond previous emission levels. This study uses a discrete choice experiment in Sweden with potential impact investors towards climate change mitigation to elicit their preferences towards progress on carbon targets, target emission reduction level and science-based approval for more or less emission-intensive firms. The findings suggest that respondents favour many target characteristics independently and in interactions with other carbon information. Results of the latent class analysis further suggest preference heterogeneity towards carbon targets to stem from attitudinal-, cognitive-, knowledge- and socio-demographic characteristics of individuals.

Recent research shows that managers, much like investors, are prone to sentiment. In this paper, we study the effect of managerial sentiment on firms’ operations both theoretically and empirically. Consistent with our model’s predictions, we find that high managerial sentiment increases employment growth, especially among firms with limited investment opportunities and regardless of their cash resources. We also show that high managerial sentiment offsets the negative effect of low investor sentiment and bad governance on employment, but ultimately leads to lower labor productivity. Overall, the findings unveil a new channel through which optimistic managers affect firms’ operations.

The efficient market hypothesis predicts that asset prices reflect all available information. Recent experimental work found the rational expectation model to outperform the prior information model in contingent claim markets when traders hold homogeneous values, despite the no trade equilibrium. However, recent experiments have also demonstrated the inability of contingent claim markets to successfully aggregate information when traders hold highly differentiated asset values. These prior findings beg the question of whether homogeneous values are a necessary condition for efficient market outcomes in contingent claim markets. The experiments reported in this paper show that homogeneous values are not a necessary condition for information aggregation.

This study characterizes the relationship between U.S. National Home Prices and Immigration Narrative as portrayed on TV news. Integrating Narrative Economics and Natural Language Processing (NLP) sentiment analysis, I analyze a large dataset of 1.96 million TV news transcripts spanning July 2009 to December 2023 to capture the sentiment of the Immigration Narrative. Immigration Narrative Sentiment and U.S. Home Prices are associated. One standard deviation orthogonalized shock to the sentiment Granger-causes a statistically significant and economically meaningful increase in the Case–Shiller U.S. National Home Price. The cumulative increase is equivalent to about 26 percent of the average monthly change during the sample period. Moreover, the effect of a shock to the Immigration Narrative Sentiment on Home Prices is permanent, suggesting that the Immigration Narrative contains fundamental information about Home Prices not captured by standard economic variables. Conversely, there is no evidence that Home Price variation affects Immigration Narrative.

We develop a novel direct measure of abnormal retail attention using tweet frequency on StockTwits. Contrary to prior evidence, our results show that firm-level abnormal retail attention is only slightly diminished by market-level abnormal retail attention.More importantly, we find that firm-level abnormal retail attention enhances the immediate incorporation of earnings information in share prices and alleviates post earnings announcement drift. Unlike prior studies that usually consider retail investors uninformed and play no role in price discovery, our results suggest that the proliferation of inexpensive techniques for information gathering nowadays makes the role played by retail investors in capital markets increasingly important.

We explore the role of extrapolative beliefs in return predictability in the Chinese stock market. Extrapolation-based theories suggest that the return predictability arises from the eventual correction of mispricing caused by extrapolators, particularly during periods of high extrapolative beliefs. Our findings support this notion, indicating that greater extrapolative beliefs strengthen the return predictability of valuation ratios. Mechanism analyses reveal that extrapolative beliefs influence the mean-reversion and investor sentiment.

We study the effects of digital financial education interventions on undergraduate students’ financial knowledge in a small-scale RCT. We test the substitutability or complementarity of two treatments: an online video financial education treatment and an incentive-based approach where students are issued pre-paid voucher cards worth 50 EUR to register with a broker specializing in robo-advised investment in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Three months after the intervention, the video treatment enhanced financial knowledge scores by more than 0.5 standard deviations. Conversely, the vouchers showed no effect. The findings suggest that subsidies encouraging robo-advised investment into ETFs cannot substitute direct financial education in our setting, and there is no evidence for complementarity between these interventions.

Focusing on GameFi, we test theories regarding the relationship between return volatility and trading volume. These theories include the Mixture of Distribution Hypothesis (MDH) and the Sequential Information Arrival Hypothesis (SIAH). Empirical results indicate rejection of MDH and support for SIAH. These results are robust to alternative measurements of trading volume and return volatility. Subperiod analysis further reveals that SIAH is more pronounced during periods of high investor attention and low economic uncertainty. The results will be of interest to scholars interested in the robustness of established financial theories for revolutionary financial products.