Institutional investors appear to have selective preferences regarding corporate social responsibility. They appear indifferent to the presence of positive environmental (E) and social (S) indicators, but underweight stocks with negative ES indicators. This asymmetric pattern is particularly...

Compared to conventional mutual funds, socially responsible mutual funds outperform during periods of market crisis. This dampening of downside risk comes at the cost of under performing during non-crisis periods. Investors with Prospect Theory utility functions would value the skewness of these...

I describe household behavior in boom and bust economic cycles with a particular focus on the recent financial crisis. The behaviors are motivated by cognitive limitations and psychological bias. In addition, household behavior exacerbates the boom/bust economic cycle. In boom times, households'...

Some U.S. politicians advocate policy to inhibit share repurchases. We can learn from corporate reaction to such a new policy in India. The Indian federal government recently levied a 20 percent tax, plus surcharge, on share repurchases. We show that companies did not slow down their share...

We find individuals are four times more likely to purchase stocks of their local direct utility company as opposed to utility companies operating outside their state of residence. Our tests reveal that individuals do not possess superior or private information about their local utilities....

The underlying physiological mechanisms of biases are not well understood. As such, we examine the impact of testosterone and cortisol levels on several commonplace investment biases using realistic trading simulations. Cortisol, the biological marker of stress, is positively related to the...

Social media has reshaped business models, economies, politics, and culture around the world. In this paper, we identified social media stocks from various sectors by using a strict, academic definition and then studied their performance and return characteristics. Multivariate regression...

This study tests the hypothesis that non-domestic cross-listing is associated with increased firm visibility. We examine visibility changes on the two exchanges with the largest number of non-domestic listings: the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Noting that...

We examine the relation between minority shareholder protection laws, ownership concentration, and board independence. Minority shareholder rights is a country-level governance variable. Ownership structure and board composition represent firm-level governance variables. Prior research...

In response to Morningstar’s release of carbon risk (CR) scores in May 2018, (environmentally) sustainable mutual funds in the U.S. showed a greater reduction in their portfolio CR relative to conventional funds. The observed causal impact of this third-party disclosure is consistent with the...