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This paper proposes new holding horizon (HH) measures of active management, and examines the relation between horizon and manager skill. Our HH measures identify, in the cross-section, funds with better long-term alphas, while reported turnover identifies, in the time-series, when a particular fund is likely to exhibit a higher alpha in the short run. This superior long-term performance of long HH funds is due to their superior skills in picking stocks with higher future cash-flow growth. Moreover, stocks largely held by long-horizon funds outperform stocks largely held by short-horizon funds by 2.4%-3.8% per year, adjusted for risk, over the following five-year period.

Between March and August 2020, S&P and Moody’s downgraded approximately 25$\%$ of collateral feeding into CLOs and only 2$\%$ of tranche values, with rating actions concentrating in junior tranches. Both S&P and Moody’s modeling indicate that the impacts should have been considerably larger, especially for higher-rated tranches. Neither changes in correlation nor the accumulation of pre-COVID-19 protective cushions can explain the downgrade asymmetry on upper tranches. Instead, CLO managers repositioned their collateral pools to dampen the negative credit shock and rating agencies incorporated qualitative adjustments in their CLO ratings. Important potential policy and market implications from these findings are discussed. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Variable annuities, the largest liability of U.S. life insurers, are investment products containing long-dated minimum return guarantees. I show that guarantees with similar economic risks are treated differently by regulation and these differences impact insurers’ hedging behavior. When the regulatory regime recognizes certain risks, insurers start to hedge these risks in a substantial way. For some guarantees, this involves hedging both interest rate and equity market risks. However, for others, it involves hedging only equity market risk. As the regulatory regime still does not recognize the interest rate risk of all guarantees, insurers remain exposed to substantial interest rate risk. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

We analyze insurance demand experiments conducted in two different settings: in-person at a university laboratory and online using Amazon's Mechanical Turk crowdworking platform ("MTurk"). Subject demographics differ significantly across the samples, but average insurance demand is similar. However, MTurk subjects have more variation in their demand and react less to changes in exogenous factors of the insurance situation. Applying filters to the MTurk population does not lead to more comparable demand between both samples. Additionally, while MTurk subjects pass comprehension questions at the same rate as in-person subjects, they show more random behavior in other questions. Based on our experiment, we outline the advantages and disadvantages of each platform, suggest some best practices for conducting insurance demand experiments using MTurk, and draw implications for future studies using this subject population.

Exploiting detailed disclosures mandated by Accounting Standard Codification (ASC) 820, we provide evidence for the return relevance of Level 3 fair value remeasurements for a comprehensive sample of U.S. listed banks. We find that Level 3 remeasurements recognized in earnings are more return relevant than those recognized in other comprehensive income (OCI). Our results suggest that Level 3 remeasurements in OCI partially reflect transitory illiquidity discounts that are less relevant when banks have the ability to hold the underlying assets. The regulatory capital treatment of OCI also affects the return relevance of Level 3 remeasurements in OCI. Importantly, we find no differences in the return relevance of realized versus unrealized Level 3 remeasurements in earnings, allaying concerns that investors perceive unrealized Level 3 remeasurements of lesser quality. Overall, our findings support the usefulness of the segregated disclosures of Level 3 fair value remeasurements. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

We use detailed assessments of CEO personalities to explore the nature of CEO overconfidence as it is commonly measured. Longholder, the option-based measure of CEO overconfidence introduced by Malmendier and Tate (2005a) and widely used in the behavioral corporate finance and economics literatures, is significantly related to several specific characteristics that are associated with overconfident individuals as well as individuals with lower ability. Similar relations hold for overconfidence measures based on CEOs’ earnings guidance. Investment-cash flow sensitivities are larger for both Longholder and less able CEOs. After controlling for ability and other characteristics, Longholder CEOs’ investments remain significantly more sensitive to cash flows. These results suggest that overconfidence, as measured by Longholder, is correlated with lower ability but still reflects empirically distinct aspects of overconfidence.

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the relationship between firms’ decisions to expense employee stock options (ESOs) under the voluntary period of Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No. 123 (SFAS 123) and their market-to-book (MTB-1) ratio and conditional conservatism. Conservatism is chosen because, even though expensing of ESOs is a conservative accounting treatment, it is not obvious how the decision would be related to the MTB-1 ratio and conditional conservatism, particularly because the MTB-1 is a long-run measure of conservatism and the decision to voluntarily expense is examined over two years. The setting provides a unique opportunity to assess how two major proxies of conservatism are related. Design/methodology/approach – Using firms listed in the S&P 1500 index, firms that expensed ESOs are compared to firms that disclosed only in the financial statements. The main comparison uses a logistic regression. Findings – During the period when expensing ESOs was voluntary, SFAS 123, the MTB-1 ratio was negatively associated with ESO expense recognition, but conditional conservatism was positively associated with ESO expense recognition. The former is attributed to incentives of conservatism and the latter to the tenet of conservatism tending to reduce income. Research limitations/implications – The findings add to the literature/controversy on the negative relationship between the MTB-1 ratio and conditional conservatism. More important, they support using more than one measure of conservatism in studies that involve accounting conservatism. A limitation is that the findings are specific to voluntary ESO expense recognition. Originality/value – This is the first study to examine how conservatism affects the choice to recognize an item on the financial statements or disclosure only. In addition, the study shows that firms were willing to incur real costs from their financial reporting.

International and U.S. accounting standards mandate a one-step quantitative impairment test for goodwill and other indefinite-lived intangibles, but U.S. standards allow an optional qualitative assessment before the quantitative test. This option is intended to reduce the complexity and costs of the quantitative test. We demonstrate that U.S. firms using this option have comparatively higher valuations and face higher expected costs for conducting quantitative tests. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we show that firms using this option have a marginally higher incidence of impairments, suggesting that the qualitative assessment does not systematically allow companies to avoid write-downs. Moreover, we do not find clear evidence that using this option decreases the timeliness of impairments or increases monitoring costs for auditors, regulators, and investors. Our study provides evidence about the consequences of a revised impairment approach and speaks to the broader issue of allowing unconditional options and qualitative judgments in financial reporting. Data Availability: Data are available from public sources identified in the text. Hand-collected data are available upon request. JEL Classifications: M41; M42; M48.

In Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases in the United States, firms are either reorganized, acquired, or liquidated. I show that decisions to liquidate often reduce creditor recovery, costing creditors billions of dollars every year. I exploit the within-district random assignment of bankruptcy judges to estimate a structural model of bankruptcy. I estimate that liquidation is frequently chosen when a reorganization would have maximized total creditor recovery. Liquidations involving “363 sales,” in which managers sell assets without creditor approval, are especially harmful for creditors. I estimate that courts could dramatically improve creditor recovery by assigning liquidations using a statistical model.

We examine whether public financial statement information is incrementally useful in forecasting confidential taxable income. More precise firm-level taxable income forecasts can improve policymakers' modeling of the tax system and the analysis of proposed changes in corporate tax law, while more accurate macro-level forecasts of corporate taxable income can improve estimates of corporate tax revenues, a significant component of the federal budget. We find the addition of financial statement information improves firm- and industry-level estimates of future taxable income by primarily providing more timely information, but also through accruals. Our results suggest that macroeconomic forecasts of taxable income may be further improved by the aggregation of firm-level forecasts that are generated using financial statement information. Importantly, our results are driven primarily by tax information in financial statements. We also contribute to the research on the information content of financial statement information for forecasting economic activity. JEL Classifications: M41; M48; H25.

How do people record information about the outcomes they observe in their environment? Building on a well-established neuroscientific framework, we propose a model in which people are hampered in their perception of outcomes that they expect to seldom encounter. We provide experimental evidence for such “outlier blindness” and discuss how it provides a microfoundation for neglected tail risk by investors in financial markets.

The success of behavioral economics has led to a new challenge: many biases offer observationally similar predictions for a targeted financial anomaly. To tame this bias zoo, we combine subjective survey responses with observational data to propose a new approach, one that is robust to question-specific biases introduced through surveys. We illustrate this approach by administering a nationwide survey of Chinese retail investors to elicit their trading motives. In cross-sectional regressions of respondents’ actual turnover on survey-based trading motives, perceived information advantage and gambling preference dominate other motives, though they are not the most prevalent biases based on survey responses.

How does the value of life affect annuity demand? To address this question, we construct a portfolio choice problem with three key features: i) agents have access to life-contingent assets, ii) they always prefer living to dying, iii) agents have non-expected utility preferences. We show that as utility from being alive increases, annuity demand decreases (increases) if agents are more (less) averse to risk rather than to intertemporal fluctuations. Put differently, if people prefer early resolution of uncertainty, they are less interested in annuities when the value of life is high. Our findings have two important implications. First, we get better understanding of the well-known annuity puzzle. Second, we argue that the observed low annuity demand provides evidence that people prefer early rather than late resolution of uncertainty.

This study examines whether sell-side equity analysts engage in “social learning” where their earnings forecasts are influenced by the forecasts and outcomes of other analysts associated with other firms (i.e., the “peers”) in their respective portfolios. We find that analyst optimism is negatively correlated with the recent forecast errors among peers on other firms in the analyst portfolio. An analyst is also more likely to issue “bold” forecasts when similar forecasts were recently issued for other portfolio firms. Analysts learn more from their peers with similar personal characteristics. Overall, social learning is beneficial to analysts and improves their forecast accuracy.

This study focuses on assessing the suitability and condition of various bankruptcy risk models applied to construction companies listed on the Vietnam Stock Market. In this study, the panel data were collected from the disclosed financial statements of the companies from 2012 to 2017. Through the assessment, bankruptcy risks are predicted for the companies that are experiencing initial signals such as delisting, compulsory supervision. In the next step, interviews were conducted to justify which of the following factors may indicate the companies at the risk of being bankrupted: asset management, capital structure, business size, and/or state management.

In this study, we consider how changing expectations of earnings affect a dishonest manager’s strategy to overstate earnings and an auditor’s strategy to exert effort in a two-period setting. We model the manager type as either honest or dishonest, which allows us to differentiate audit risk from audit effort. Researchers typically assume audit effort and audit risk are negatively associated, which we find for changes in our period 2 payoff parameters, but we find the association can be positive, specifically with changes in our period 1 game parameters. Further, by dichotomizing, we show that the directional change in market price does not necessarily follow the directional change in audit effort as the prior literature suggests, because market price also adjusts for expected bias through changes in the intercept. A key finding is that when period 1 expected earnings increase, the probability that the manager is dishonest decreases, which allows the auditor to reduce audit effort. This finding suggests that observations of earnings that just meet or beat an earnings target and suspected of being managed may not be indicative of an audit failure, but indicative of an efficient allocation of effort. Finally, our multiperiod setting demonstrates that the effects from a change in the manager’s or auditor’s incentives in period 1 may reverse in period 2. Studies typically examine the contemporaneous effects of these changes on market price and/or audit risk, but fail to identify the cross-temporal effects we document in our study.

An important societal problem is that people underinsure against risks that are unlikely or occur in the far future, such as natural disasters and long-term care needs. One explanation is that uncertainty about the risk of non-reimbursement induces ambiguity averse and risk prudent decision makers to take out less insurance. We set up an insurance experiment to test this explanation. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that the demand for insurance is lower when the nonperformance risk is ambiguous than when it is known and when decision makers are risk prudent. We cannot attribute the lower take-up of insurance to our measure of ambiguity aversion, probably because ambiguity attitudes are richer than aversion alone.Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11166-021-09364-7.

This paper studies how professional asset allocators such as endowments, fund-of-funds, or pension funds select fund managers for investments. We develop a simple model of their due-diligence process to motivate predictions about the timing of investment decisions. We then test these predictions using a unique dataset with detailed information on the interactions between a large institutional investor and 1,093 hedge funds over the course of 8 years. Soft information conveyed during the meetings with fund managers strongly influences the decisions. A one standard deviation increase in our proxy for positive soft information doubles the probability of fund selection and reduces the due-diligence time by 20%. Contrary to prior research, we find no evidence that relying on these subjective judgements is wasteful. Instead, in a matched sample, conditioned on the fund characteristics and past performance, the 12-month average peer-adjusted returns are 1.5% higher for the selected funds.

Many companies regularly disclose non-GAAP performance measures to communicate firm-specific information that does not fit within the mold of GAAP reporting. However, these non-GAAP measures may have low information content or even be misleading to investors. Thus, the question arises of whether auditors should play a larger role in the reporting of non-GAAP measures, which currently are not audited. We run an experiment to provide ex ante evidence on the effect of auditing non-GAAP measures. Specifically, we present investor-participants with a non-GAAP measure that should be used when making investment judgments (more informative) or should not be used when making investment judgments (less informative) and is either audited or is not audited. As predicted, we find that, when participants view a non-GAAP measure that is more informative, they appropriately use the non-GAAP measure in their investment-related judgments, regardless of whether the measure is audited. However, also as predicted, we find that, while participants appropriately do not use a less informative non-GAAP measure when it is not audited, participants inappropriately do use the less informative non-GAAP measure in their investment-related judgments when it is audited. Mediation results provide evidence consistent with audits affecting investors’ reliance on non-GAAP measures. Specifically, our results are consistent with audits of non-GAAP measures signaling more than is intended, evidenced by investors perceiving an audited non-GAAP measure as being useful in their investment decisions when the measure is less informative to them. Our findings suggest that regulators should exercise caution when it comes to prescribing assurance over non-GAAP measures.

SYNOPSIS This paper evaluates the associations between credit default swap (CDS) spreads and risk disclosure characteristics, especially the expected qualitative and the expected quantitative impacts of risks on companies' future performance and information on risk management. We find that CDS investors can benefit from information on expected risk impacts and from information on risk management, which is important for the current discussion of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on risk disclosure regulation. However, for companies, the disclosure of such information can be either beneficial or costly, depending on the initial risk perception of CDS investors prior to the publication of risk disclosures and on the disclosed risk factors. Furthermore, we expand the literature by automatically measuring the mentioned risk disclosure characteristics using dictionary-based approaches.

This article examines factor investing in the presence of an environment, social, and governance (ESG) screening overlay. The authors find that virtually no degradation in performance or turnover costs occur when using a negative-based ESG screen (i.e., removing only companies that have an actively bad ESG score). However, there are severe risk-induced performance issues and high transactions costs involved when the screening process becomes more active and includes only companies that are ESG-forward. The authors find that this is true for individually constructed factor portfolios, a composite benchmark of factor portfolios, and a stock selection model constructed from factor scores. Interestingly, they find that both screening methodologies produce significant improvement in ESG portfolio scores. They find very modest increases in turnover with the ESG screening of bad companies and significant costs with the more aggressive ESG screening techniques. In general, the authors conclude that ESG screening of negative companies is a positive way forward for agents who wish to add ESG to their factor-based investment portfolios and that the method of implementing ESG makes a large difference in outcomes. Key Findings ▪ ESG screens that exclude poor companies have superior performance to screens that include good companies. ▪ ESG screens that exclude poor companies incur only a slightly higher turnover than unscreened portfolios. ▪ ESG Screened portfolios that use exclusion screening perform better than unscreened portfolios, but they also are more growthy.

We examine the effect of capitalization vs expensing on UK firms’ R&D expenditures. Our investigation is motivated by the UK’s mandatory switch from UK GAAP to IFRS in 2005. Under UK GAAP, firms could elect to expense or capitalize development expenditures, but IFRS mandates capitalization. Thus, “capitalizers” maintained their accounting method, while “switchers” were required to change from expensing to capitalization. Using a difference-in-difference design, we examine the effect of the rule change on the amount and riskiness of the two groups’ R&D expenditures. Consistent with arguments that expensing’s deleterious effect on income causes firms to reduce their R&D outlays, we find that switching firms increased their R&D expenditures more than firms that continued to capitalize. We subject our results to numerous robustness tests, using propensity score matched samples, comparing early vs late switchers, switchers with high vs low R&D expenditure growth, examining R&D behavior in the last year before IFRS adoption, and a placebo test in which we alter the switch date. Across all of these tests, our results support the conclusion that the accounting method affects the amount that firms invest in R&D. Our results attest to the real effects of accounting policy on firms’ R&D investments.

We examine whether the extent of financial statement disaggregation affects the pricing of audit engagements in the United States. We hypothesize and find that auditors assess higher engagement risk and charge higher audit fees for clients with more disaggregated financial statements. We also find that these higher audit fees are not the result of either increased auditor effort to mitigate detection risk or heightened inherent and control risks reflected in lower financial reporting quality. Instead, we document that greater financial statement disaggregation is positively associated with litigation risk. This result suggests that higher audit fees arise out of auditors' assessments of heightened client and auditor business risks associated with litigation. While financial statement disaggregation may have beneficial effects on the quality of financial information, we document that financial statement disaggregation can impose costs on firms in terms of higher audit fees and a higher likelihood of litigation. Our study informs standard setters, firms and auditors as they debate the costs, benefits and extent of disaggregation to be presented in financial statements. Ministry of Education (MOE) Kevin Koh and Yen H. Tong acknowledge funding support fromthe Ministry of Education, Singapore (RG64/19)

Purpose The Chinese fund market has witnessed significant developments in recent years. However, although there has been a range of studies assessing fund performance in developed industries, the rapidly developing fund industry in China has received very little attention. This study aims to examine the performance of open-end securities investment funds investing in Chinese domestic equity during the period May 2003 to September 2020. Specifically, applying a non-parametric bootstrap methodology from the literature on fund performance, the authors investigate the role of skill versus luck in this rapidly evolving investment funds industry. Design/methodology/approach This study evaluates the performance of Chinese equity securities investment funds from 2003–2020 using a bootstrap methodology to distinguish skill from luck in performance. The authors consider unconditional and conditional performance models. Findings The bootstrap methodology incorporates non-normality in the idiosyncratic risk of fund returns, which is a major drawback in “conventional” performance statistics. The evidence does not support the existence of “genuine” skilled fund managers. In addition, it indicates that poor performance is mainly attributable to bad stock picking skills. Practical implications The authors find that the top-ranked funds with positive abnormal performance are attributed to “good luck” not “good skill” while the negative abnormal performance of bottom funds is mainly due to “bad skill.” Therefore, sensible advice for most Chinese equity investors would be against trying to “pick winners funds” among Chinese securities investment funds but it would be recommended to avoid holding “losers.” At the present time, investors should consider other types of funds, such as index/tracker funds with lower transactions. In addition, less risk-averse investors may consider Chinese hedge funds [Zhao (2012)] or exchange-traded fund [Han (2012)]. Originality/value The paper makes several contributions to the literature. First, the authors examine a wide range (over 50) of risk-adjusted performance models, which account for both unconditional and conditional risk factors. The authors also control for the profitability and investment risks in Fama and French (2015). Second, the authors select the “best-fit” model across all risk-adjusted models examined and a single “best-fit” model from each of the three classes. Therefore, the bootstrap analysis, which is mainly based on the selected best-fit models, is more precise and robust. Third, the authors reduce the possibility that findings may be sample-period specific or may be a survivor (upward) biased. Fourth, the authors consider further analysis based on sub-periods and compare fund performance in different market conditions to provide more implications to investors and practitioners. Fifth, the authors carry out extensive robustness checks and show that the findings are robust in relation to different minimum fund histories and serial correlation and heteroscedasticity adjustments. Sixth, the authors use higher frequency weekly data to improve statistical estimation.

Portfolio insurance targets the elimination of losses in excess of a predefined threshold while allowing for access to the upside potential of an underlying risky asset. This article studies the implications of the choice of the underlying asset on the frequency and magnitude of floor breaches and on the loss of performance associated with the protection against downside risk; it considers in particular the use of a diversified portfolio of stocks as opposed to a single stock. The authors find that gap risk is more prominent when insurance is applied to a stock than to a portfolio, but it can be reduced by implementing time-invariant portfolio protection or by letting the multiplier decrease when volatility rises. However, option-based insurance with dynamic option replication has a large probability of breaching, no matter the underlying asset. Among diversified portfolios, minimum variance portfolios minimize the opportunity cost of insurance, but the ranking of diversified portfolios in terms of long-term returns does not appear to be disturbed by insurance. Key Findings ▪ Floor breaches in a portfolio insurance strategy occur more frequently and larger if the risky asset of the strategy is a single stock than if it is a diversified portfolio of stocks. ▪ Option-based portfolio insurance with dynamic replication of the option involves large gap risk, whether the risky asset is a single stock or a diversified portfolio. ▪ The opportunity cost of insurance against downside risk, measured as the long-term return spread between the insured portfolio and its underlying risky asset, is minimized by taking the risky asset to be the minimum variance portfolio.

There are numerous studies investigating the effect of health insurance on healthcare utilisation, but there is little empirical evidence examining the effect of private health insurance on objective health outcomes in a universal public health system. Tracking each individual’s health status using panel data, we explore whether there is a difference in the probability of contracting a critical illness or becoming disabled between the privately insured and uninsured. The empirical analysis showed that the incidence of severe disease and disability was 0.76–0.52 times and 0.63–0.31 times lower, respectively, for those with private health insurance. Many theoretical and empirical studies have argued that excessive healthcare utilisation caused by owning health insurance incurs social costs. However, if health insurance lowers the likelihood of serious illness and disability, in the long run, it may lower healthcare utilisation and have a positive effect on human capital and social welfare.

Sports participants are actively adopting wearables to measure their performance but they can also be used to minimise and control risks. We investigate and compare the results of 272 runners and 265 soccer players to determine the current use of wearables as well as the propensity to purchase insurance services that are coupled with the wearable technology. This includes an inquiry into the factors that determine people’s readiness to share data with a potential insurance carrier. We use a Logit function to show that soccer players are more likely to purchase insurance as a means of protecting future income, especially at a younger age. We also find that perception of and experience with technology are key determinants of the use of wearables and the disposition to share insurance data for both cohorts. Wearables are also more likely to be adopted if offered at a lower pricing point. Finally, both cohorts are more likely to share their data with an insurer if they have a positive perception of the insurance industry and its products.

We examine how executives' ability to control their firms' exposure to risk affects the design of their incentive-compensation contracts. Our natural experimental evidence shows that exchange-traded weather derivatives allow executives to control their firms' exposure to weather risk. Once these derivatives became available, those executives who use them to hedge experience relative reductions in their total compensation and equity incentives. The decline in compensation is consistent with a reduction in the risk premium that executives receive for exposure to weather risk. The decline in equity incentives is consistent with the relation between risk and incentives shifting in a complementary direction when executives can better control their firms' exposure to risk. Collectively, our findings provide evidence that executives' ability to control their firms' exposure and, by extension, their own to an important source of risk influences the design of their incentive-compensation contracts. JEL Classifications: G32; J33; J41.

Reverse mortgages are a financial tool for lower-income seniors to release home equity and increase their retirement income. In the United States, reverse mortgages are generally insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) through the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program, which protects borrowers from owing more than the value of their house. Previous research on reverse mortgage valuation typically focuses on mortgage termination risks related to mortality and morbidity, but few studies explore the impact of early surrender on the entire risk profile of reverse mortgages. To fill this gap, we propose a utility approach to investigate borrowers’ surrender behavior. We explore how a surrender-and-refinance strategy affects the cash flows of the HECM insurance program and also assess its tail risk.

Reverse mortgages are designed to offer additional sources of financing incomes to senior homeowners. In the United States, home equity conversion mortgages (HECMs) are nonrecourse reverse mortgage loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Based on a fairly recent stream of the reverse mortgage literature, the relatively high loan-to-value ratio has jeopardized the financial soundness of such contracts. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, rising property taxes and homeowner insurance defaults impaired HECM solvency; hence, policy changes were implemented to help prevent borrower default. In this paper, we propose a pricing solution which, as we demonstrate in the paper, effectively improves program solvency by fairly matching the benefits and liabilities of HECM participants. The methodology allows for customization of fair mortgage loan payments and premiums and improves program accessibility based on borrowers’ individual credit and default risk. Our proposed pricing solution and the corresponding newly designed rating system provide HECM policymakers with a better payment arrangement and offer important policy implications for the current HECM program. Rather than borrower property taxes and insurance delinquency, we demonstrate that the mispricing of HECM mortgage insurance premiums and the corresponding loan payments could be the primary reasons for program insolvency.

We assess ex post moral hazard in Australian private health insurance (PHI) relating to dental care services (so-called extras cover) using the longitudinal Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. Cross-sectional probit regressions specify dental care use as a function of dental care demand and endogenous PHI policy holding, including self-assessed health condition, health risk factors and socio-economic controls including age, income, education, family structure and welfare status. We find that ex post moral hazard results in the additional use of dental care services by PHI holders. Further, dynamic analysis indicates that PHI, no matter how sporadic, is always associated with significantly more likely use of dental care services, increasing when continuously held, suggesting strong persistence in moral hazard.

I conduct an experiment with senior executives (CEOs, CFOs, controllers) to examine how their risk disclosure quality, with respect to disclosure volume and specificity, is influenced by three factors: first, whether the disclosure behavior is framed internally by the firm as obtaining a gain or avoiding a loss from disclosure; second, whether the external disclosure regime mandates risk mitigation disclosures that explain how a risk is handled; and third, whether the risk under consideration for disclosure is weakly or strongly mitigated. This research question is important because high-quality risk disclosures are challenging to regulate and changing how disclosure behavior is framed could substitute for costly disclosure regulations. I predict and find that a gain frame prompts managers to make more detailed risk disclosures than a loss frame, regardless of the disclosure regime. I also predict and find that a loss frame leads to less detailed and more boilerplate disclosure of weakly mitigated risks when risk mitigation plans are mandated. Given that the SEC (2016) is considering mandating risk mitigation disclosures similar to the practice in other regimes, my findings provide insights on the limitations of mandating these disclosures. My results suggest that changing managers’ disclosure frame internally through firm initiatives could be more effective in prompting higher quality risk disclosures.

Alternative risk premia (ARP) are designed to provide low-cost exposures to long–short risk premia often embedded in hedge fund returns. This article describes the performance of the ARP market in ...

PurposeThis paper attempts to investigate the influence of psychological biases on saving decision-making of bank customers in Ghana.Design/methodology/approachIt employs weighted least squares regression to test the effect of psychological biases on savings decisions of bank customers.FindingsThe findings show that all the nine psychological biases, namely mental accounting, availability, loss aversion, representativeness, anchoring, overconfidence, status quo, framing effect and disposition effect employed for the study have a significant influence on saving decision of bank customers. The results depict that psychological biases are entrenched in the saving pattern of bank customers in Ghana.Practical implicationsFor policy purposes, the study recommends that bank customers need to enhance their knowledge of psychological biases in order to improve their gains from savings, and not to fall prey to these prejudices. The satisfied customer is a dependable source of bank viability and survival.Originality/valueTo the best of the knowledge of the author, this study provides the first empirical evidence of the influence of psychological biases on saving decisions of bank customers in Ghana. The findings of this study will enhance knowledge on the influence of psychological biases on individual decision-making and will accentuate the fact that the individual is not an entirely rational being.

We survey stakeholders in the financial reporting process to examine trust in fair value accounting. Although respondents demonstrate high confidence in financial statements, they believe that fair value accounting decreases trust in financial reporting and that preparing fair value numbers is costly but beneficial. They also strongly believe in the Conceptual Framework underlying standard setting. Using multivariate regression analyses, we find that perceiving fair value accounting as beneficial is positively associated with trust in it, consistent with the theory of reasoned action that people engage in behavior (e.g., trust) based on expected positive outcomes of that behavior. We find that this positive association increases with stronger beliefs in the Conceptual Framework. Our paper contributes to the fair value literature by providing general insights on trust in fair value accounting and a specific and novel assessment of how the perceived benefits of fair value accounting increase stakeholders' trust in it. JEL Classifications: D82; G34; M41.

We examine whether criminal records of CEOs and rank-and-file employees are associated with firms’ likelihood of bankruptcy, and whether lenders adjust their required cost of debt accordingly. We use a nationwide sample of private firms and criminal registers covering all firm employees. We find that the likelihood of bankruptcy is positively associated with the CEO’s criminal record and the proportion of employees with criminal records. We find some, though less robust, evidence that lenders price a firm’s loan higher when the firm’s CEO has a criminal record and when more of the employees have criminal records. The results suggest that the characteristics of firm employees represent a risk that, to some extent, is priced by lenders.

We reexamine the positive association between stock option vega and earnings management previously documented in Armstrong et al. (2013; ALOT). In contrast to ALOT, prior empirical research and practitioner literature emphasizes earnings management’s goals of increasing stock price and reducing volatility. Specifically, we assess whether the association is robust to (i) employing discretionary accruals that are less prone to misspecification, (ii) focusing on a more recent time period, and (iii) including additional controls for period-specific factors. Our main findings are as follows. First, we fail to find a positive association between vega and earnings management after controlling for performance-related misspecification in discretionary accruals. Second, we find no association between vega and earnings management in a more recent time period, suggesting the results of ALOT may be sensitive to period-specific factors. Lastly, the positive association vanishes when we control for year fixed effects, growth opportunities, or monitoring, suggesting the original ALOT’s results may be sensitive to correlated, omitted variables. Overall, our results question the extent to which vega incentivizes earnings management. Our results may be of interest to boards of directors in designing executive compensation contracts; to regulators in crafting policies that maintain high levels of financial reporting quality; and to researchers seeking to identify settings where earnings management incentives are most salient.