The potential manager-investor conflict of interests in mutual funds is a classic agency problem. Using a database from Portugal, we show that mutual funds tend to overweight the stocks issued by their parent and underweigh the stocks of competitors. This cannot be explained by performance,...

The absence of investor reaction to the poor performance of mutual funds is a widely reported phenomenon. This article investigates the role of load costs as an explanation for the phenomenon and concludes that back-end load fees are an obstacle to reaction. We found evidence consistent with the...

This paper studies the factors that determine the financial literacy level of the Portuguese individual investors and explores the relation between financial literacy and financial behavior, particularly portfolio diversification. Our results suggest that the average financial literacy level of...

We investigate how the strength of the positive association between frequency of trading and information acquisition is dependent on the sources of information used by investors and on investors’ overconfidence. We add to the existing literature by investigating if the positive relationship...

We use a survey of individual investors disclosed by the Portuguese Securities Commission (CMVM) in May 2005 to study the impact of investors' levels of financial literacy on portfolio diversification. We consider distinct aspects of financial literacy, and control for socioeconomic and...

We use a spatial Probit model to study the effect of contagion between banking systems of different countries. Applied to the late 1990s banking crisis in Asia we show that the phenomena of contagion is better seized using a spatial than a traditional Probit model. Unlike the latter, the spatial...

This paper investigates whether investors' domestic experience helps them enter foreign markets. We show that investors first invest in domestic securities and only some time later they invest abroad in foreign securities. We also show that investors who trade more often in the domestic market...

We use a spatial Probit model to study banking crises and show that the probability of a systemic banking crisis depends on contagion and that this effect may result from business connections between institutions or from similarities between banking systems.

We use a spatial Probit model to study the effect of contagion between banking systems of different countries. Applied to the late 90’s banking crisis in Asia we show that the phenomena of contagion is better seized using a spatial than a traditional Probit model. Unlike the latter, the...

The purpose of this paper is to explain differences in the productivity of capital across countries taking 84 rich and poor countries over the period 1980-2011, and to test the orthodox neoclassical assumption of diminishing returns to capital. The marginal product of capital is measured as the...