The global trend towards tighten regulation of financial institutions and the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) may hasten the unwinding of cross-shareholdings in Japan, and there are signs that this is already happening. Finding buyers for such shares is therefore a...

Much of the industrialized world is undergoing a significant demographic shift, placing strain on public pension systems. Policymakers are responding with pension system reforms that put more weight on privately managed retirement funds. One concern with these changes is the effect on individual...

Much of the industrialized world is undergoing a significant demographic shift, placing strain on public pension systems. Policymakers are responding with pension system reforms that put more weight on privately managed retirement funds. One concern with these changes is the effect on individual...

Classical financial theory assumes that individuals are perfectly rational and act by usingcomplete and homogeneous information sets. For a long time, this has been used both ondescriptive and normative grounds. However, empirical research has shown thatinvestors systematically commit reasoning...

Using institutional equity trading data, we find that a set of small institutional investors consistently follow credit ratings issued by an investor-paid rating agency in their trading decisions. Although rating information is credit related, we find that these followers often respond more...

The disposition effect is one of the most explored biases in behavioral finance, yet most papers investigating the disposition effect use data that only cover boom periods and assume that the disposition effect is constant over time. We use individual investor trading data that comprise several...

We analyze the investment menus offered within 401(k) pension plans to the employees of the largest finance and non-finance firms. Within the sample of finance firms, we distinguish between finance firms that hire an external independent trustee and finance firms that serve also as a trustee of...

Bhattacharya et al. (2012) shows that many investors are reluctant to accept and follow financial advice. This study analyzes three possibilities which could cause this misbehavior: non-monetary costs, willingness to become informed and comprehensibility of financial information. As so many...

Counter cyclical long-term investment strategies of insurance companies and pension funds (ICPFs) can support the stability of the financial system. Yet there is limited understanding of how ICPFs invest during market shocks, such as the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt...