We use a proprietary dataset from a large Swiss retail bank to examine the impact of financial advice on individual investors’ stock trading performance and their behavioral biases. Our data allows us to classify each individual trade as either advised or independent and to compare them in a...

We present a regression-based generalization of the calendar time portfolio approach which allowsfor the inclusion of continuous and multivariate investor or firm characteristics in the analysis. Ourmethod is simple to apply and it ensures that the statistical results are heteroscedasticity...

We present a new, regression-based methodology for decomposing the risk-adjusted performance of private investors, firms, and mutual funds. Our technique allows for the inclusion of multivariate and continuous subject characteristics in the analysis and it ensures that the statistical results...

We investigate whether the diversification discount occurs partly as an artifact of poor corporate governance. In panel data models, we find that the discount narrows by 16% to 21% when we add governance variables as regression controls. We also estimate Heckman selection models that account for...

This paper investigates the problem of time stamp errors in the IBES database. We show that IBES did not store the original announcement date of both recommendations and forecasts on U.S. stocks until 2001 and even later for other countries. The announcement date in IBES is often effectively the...

I present a new Stata program, xtscc, that estimates pooled ordinary least-squares/weighted least-squares regression and fixed-effects (within) regression models with Driscoll and Kraay (Review of Economics and Statistics 80: 549–560) standard errors. By running Monte Carlo simulations, I...

This paper investigates whether geographic diversification is value-enhancing or value-destroying in the financial services sector, broadly defined. Our dataset comprises approximately 3579 observations over the period from 1985 to 2004 and covers the entire range of U.S. financial...

"Recent empirical research shows evidence of a positive relationship between the quality of firm-specific corporate governance and firm valuation. Instead of looking at one single corporate governance mechanism in isolation, we construct a broad corporate governance index and apply five...