This book helps readers understand the widely documented distortion in the portfolio choice of individual investors toward proximate firms – the proximity bias phenomenon. First, it recapitulates the fundamentals of modern portfolio theory. It then goes on to describe and demonstrate different...

CEO compensation is increasingly being linked to ESG outcomes. In this paper, we provide evidence that ESG targets in CEO pay reflect stakeholder welfare. Using granular information on contract design from Swedish firms, we show that ESG-linked contracts are more likely for CEOs with broader...

This paper examines the determinants of herding at both stock and individual investor levels and studies the portfolio performance of herd vs. non-herd portfolios using machine learning algorithms. The disposition effect and the attention effect seem to explain herding behavior at the stock...

There exists a large number of research on ownership structure and managerial compensation and their consequences for shareholder value maximization. However, academic research has been less concerned with analysis of explanatory factors for managerial myopia over time, different markets and...

China and India reported highest growth in high-tech exports for the past two decades (World Bank) and hence are increasingly becoming the countries to file for protection of intellectual property. This paper examines whether there is a delay in time to grant of a patent when applied by domestic...

Stakeholders are increasingly concerned with the social and environmental impacts of modern corporations. These concerns have led to directly incentivizing CEOs by making their pay contingent on ESG outcomes. In this paper, we propose to examine the implications of ESG-linked pay on the CEO...

Portfolio pumping is known as an “illegal” trading practice of inflating quarter-end and year-end portfolio returns. Using daily return data on U.S. domestic equity mutual funds we show that ESG funds do engage in portfolio pumping but this trading activity does not generate higher flows. On...

We examine the familiarity hypothesis of home bias by studying how foreign ownership of Swedish firms is affected by the mandatory adoption of IFRS. We decompose foreign investors into institutional and non-institutional investors. Foreign investors are further decomposed into EU (IFRS adopting...