Real-world portfolio composition is often far from being mean-variance optimal. One of the phenomena documented in investment portfolios is the home bias effect, that is, investors hold a higher-than-optimal portion of domestic assets. Analyzing hand-collected data from annual reports of German...

In this paper we analyze whether key investor information documents (KIDs) provided by suppliers/issuers help retail investors to understand the key characteristics of financial products. KIDs are fact sheets composed to describe the characteristics of financial products in a brief, standardized...

We analyze whether the results of the 1980 to 2008 U.S. presidential elections influence the stock market performance of eight industries and we examine factors that are expected to affect firms' stock returns around these elections. Our empirical analysis reflects firms' exposure to government...

The German tax system allows tax deductibility of costs of studying either as special expenses or as work-related tax deductions. However, filing tax returns and utilizing tax deductibility of costs of studying are hampered if benefits are not obvious, if costs are not automatically accounted...

Debt capital represents one of the most important means with which German companies finance their business. Yet, despite its importance, academics and practitioners alike typically analyze debt capital separately from other components of a firm's capital structure components. One important...

Herding behavior, i.e. the adjustment of a decision maker's behavior, opinion, or expectations due to real or illusionary (social) pressures, can be explained by numerous behavioral finance models, such as the cascade model or contagion. However, unambiguous empirical results are rare, mainly...