31,369 research outputs found

    How do Securities Laws Influence Affect, Happiness, & Trust?

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    This Article advocates that securities regulators promulgate rules based upon taking into consideration their impacts upon investors\u27 and others\u27 affect, happiness, and trust. Examples of these impacts are consumer optimism, financial stress, anxiety over how thoroughly securities regulators deliberate over proposed rules, investor confidence in securities disclosures, market exuberance, social moods, and subjective well-being. These variables affect and are affected by traditional financial variables, such as consumer debt, expenditures, and wealth; corporate investment; initial public offerings; and securities market demand, liquidity, prices, supply, and volume. This Article proposes that securities regulators can and should evaluate rules based upon measures of affect, happiness, and trust in addition to standard observable financial variables. This Article concludes that the organic statutes of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission are indeterminate despite mandating that federal securities laws consider efficiency among other goals. This Article illustrates analysis of affective impacts of these financial regulatory policies: mandatory securities disclosures; gun-jumping rules for publicly registered offerings; financial education or literacy campaigns; statutory or judicial default rules and menus; and continual reassessment and revision of rules. These regulatory policies impact and are impacted by investors\u27 and other people\u27s affect, happiness, and trust. Thus, securities regulators can and should evaluate such affective impacts to design effective legal policy

    The Predicament of Nature: Keiko the Whale and The Cultural Politics of Whaling in Iceland

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    This cultural analysis reconsiders the modernist narrative about the politics of whales and whale hunting in order to explore Icelandic responses to the return of the killer whale Keiko (star of the Free Willy movies) to Icelandic waters in 1998. Ambivalence about Keiko’s plight required cultural creativity to block identification with the whale since in Icelandic hegemonic discourse such feelings have been associated with the supposed irrationality of foreign protests against whale hunting. This essay draws on Bruno Latour’s writings about the politics of nature to argue for abandoning nature in a step toward the ethnographic study of human-nonhuman relations

    Reframing Sacred Values

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    Sacred values differ from material or instrumental values in that they incorporate moral beliefs that drive action in ways dissociated from prospects for success. Across the world, people believe that devotion to essential or core values – such as the welfare of their family and country, or their commitment to religion, honor, and justice – are, or ought to be, absolute and inviolable. Counterintuitively, understanding an opponent's sacred values, we believe, offers surprising opportunities for breakthroughs to peace. Because of the emotional unwillingness of those in conflict situations to negotiate sacred values, conventional wisdom suggests that negotiators should either leave sacred values for last in political negotiations or try to bypass them with sufficient material incentives. Our empirical findings and historical analysis suggest that conventional wisdom is wrong. In fact, offering to provide material benefits in exchange for giving up a sacred value actually makes settlement more difficult because people see the offering as an insult rather than a compromise. But we also found that making symbolic concessions of no apparent material benefit might open the way to resolving seemingly irresolvable conflicts. We offer suggestions for how negotiators can reframe their position by demonstrating respect, and/or by apologizing for what they sincerely regret. We also offer suggestions for how to overcome sacred barriers by refining sacred values to exclude outmoded claims, exploiting the inevitable ambiguity of sacred values, shifting the context, provisionally prioritizing values, and reframing responsibility.conflict resolution, sacred values, framing, negotiation, Israel, Palestine

    Beyond Moral Fundamentalism: Dewey’s Pragmatic Pluralism in Ethics and Politics [preprint]

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    Drawing on unpublished and published sources from 1926-1932, this chapter builds on John Dewey’s naturalistic pragmatic pluralism in ethical theory. A primary focus is “Three Independent Factors in Morals,” which analyzes good, duty, and virtue as distinct categories that in many cases express different experiential origins. The chapter suggests that a vital role for contemporary theorizing is to lay bare and analyze the sorts of conflicts that constantly underlie moral and political action. Instead of reinforcing moral fundamentalism via an outdated quest for the central and basic source of normative justification, we should foster theories with a range of idioms and emphases which, while accommodating monistic insights, better inform decision-making by opening communication across diverse elements of moral and political life, placing these elements in a wider context in which norms gain practical traction in non-ideal conditions, and expanding prospects for social inquiry and convergence on policy and action

    Investor Mood and Stock Returns: Evidence from Ice Hockey

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    Recent literature has investigated the impact of behavioral biases on asset pricing and one of these biases is shown to be investor mood. A number of studies have already documented a link between mood bias and stock returns. The objective of this thesis is to expand the existing evidence linking mood to asset prices and to investigate the stock market reaction to sudden changes in investor mood. Motivated by the abundance of psychological evidence showing the strong effect that sports results have on mood, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether there is a link between sport results, investor mood and stock prices. Therefore, the results of international ice hockey games, which have particularly attractive properties as a meas-ure of mood, are used to examine the mood changes of investors. The data used in this thesis consist of the price of broadly-based stock market indices of Czech Republic, Finland, Russia and Sweden. The time-series data for regression are formed by the closing price of the index, from which returns are defined logarithmi-cally. Indices from each country form a time-series between 1.1.1998 – 26.6.2007. Wins and losses in international ice hockey games of these countries are used to measure the sudden changes in investor mood. The games included in the study are the Olympic Games, World Championship games and World Cup games. To estimate the effect of wins and losses on stock returns, a regression model is used. No negative stock market reaction after ice hockey losses is found, except for Czech Republic after elimination games. No evidence of positive stock market reaction after ice hockey wins can be found either. It can be concluded that in most of the cases losses have more profound impact on stock returns than wins and also in half of the cases more profound impact was found when examining only elimination games. Results suggest that it may be possible that the effect associated with winning or loosing an in-ternational ice hockey game is too small to influence the national stock market index.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

    Behavioral economics and real estate bubbles: a systematic literature review

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    O fenómeno de bolhas especulativas possui uma longa história, documentado pela primeira vez em 1637, associado ao episódio histórico da Mania das Tulipas. Após esse evento, a nossa sociedade tem enfrentado inúmeras bolhas, surgindo maioritariamente no mercado de acções e mercado imobiliário. As bolhas imobiliárias mais famosas são: a bolha imobiliária Japonesa da década de 80 e a bolha imobiliária dos Estados Unidos, no início dos anos 2000. Estes fenómenos de preços tiveram um impacto devastador não só na economia dos países em questão, como também na economia de outros países. Até agora, bolhas especulativas constituíam uma área de estudo carente de investigação, onde certos conceitos ainda se encontram por definir, e um relato claro dos factores que influenciam e aceleram o fenómeno de bolhas especulativas está em falta. Observações empíricas provam que as teorias clássicas e conceitos fundamentais da literatura financeira ficam aquém de uma explicação da natureza de bolhas especulativas. Diversos argumentos relacionados com estes fenómenos foram propostos, mas acordo entre especialistas ainda não foi aceite. Por exemplo, Rober Shiller (2004) acredita que irracionalidade exuberante foi proclamada como uma das principais forças por detrás do surgimento de uma bolha no mercado imobiliário Estadunidense, nos anos 2000. Por volta da mesma altura, Eugene Fama (2010) expressou cepticismo acerca da existência deste fenómeno, motivado pelo facto de que prever e evitar bolhas não é possível. A teoria de economia comportamental emerge como uma estrutura teórica que possibilite o enquadramento do fenómeno de bolhas na literatura, melhorando assim os estudos efectuados nesta área. O conceito básico da teoria comportamental é o de que participantes num mercado financeiro são por natureza irracionais e sofrem de preconceitos a nível psicológico, resultando em decisões monetárias que aparentam irracionais, especialmente quando as condições de risco e incerteza são tidas em conta. Economia comportamental baseia-se na Teoria da Perspectiva, desenvolvida por Kanheman e Tversky in 1979, e oferece uma alternativa à existente Teoria de Utilidade Expectável. A ideia principal é a de que os participantes do mercado são irracionais por natureza. Outros conceitos de teoria comportamental são: os limites da arbitragem, como alternativa à Hipótese do Mercado Eficiente; os limites psicológicos e preconceitos cognitivos dos participantes do mercado. Apesar do campo das finanças comportamentais se encontrar bem estabelecido, prevalece ainda a abordagem de racionalidade perante um mercado e a dificuldade em quantificar fenómenos psicológicos e sociológicos, inerentes à noção de “exuberância irracional”, que contribuem para a escassez de estudos comportamentais. Quando aplicado ao mercado imobiliário, o número de estudos é cada vez mais restrito. A razão principal encontra-se nas características específicas do mercado, que dificultam a colecção de informação estatística suficiente para efectuar estudos empíricos. Esta dissertação representa uma revisão sistemática da literatura pertinente à aplicação da teoria comportamental e conceitos associados de modo a compreender e explicar a natureza de bolhas imobiliárias. Os objectivos principais da revisão sistemática são: 1. Efectuar uma revisão da literatura existente acerca destes dois tópicos, bolhas imobiliárias e teoria comportamental, de modo a definir a questão de investigação e especificar as palavras-chave mais apropriadas para a selecção dos artigos; 2. Apresentar uma estratégia de selecção dos artigos mais relevantes relacionados com a questão de investigação, que é a aplicação de teoria comportamental ao estudo da natureza das bolhas imobiliárias; 3. Definir e discutir os resultados mais importantes da selecção de artigos relacionados com o tópico; 4. Definir as oportunidades e desafios para futura investigação empírica relacionada com o tópico. A metodologia utilizada foi uma revisão sistemática da literatura, que procura minimizar as fraquezas presentes na revisão tradicional da literatura. Revisões sistemáticas são formas rigorosas e transparentes de rever a literatura. Envolvem identificar, sintetizar e avaliar todas as evidências disponíveis, quantitativas ou qualitativas, de modo a gerar uma resposta robusta e empiricamente derivada que responde à questão de investigação. Cada passo do processo de selecção está presente de acordo com o protocolo padrão de uma revisão sistemática. Os critérios de inclusão e exclusão encontram-se igualmente presentes e são estritamente seguidos durante a selecção dos artigos. A pesquisa actual começa no estudo da literatura existente relacionada com os dois tópicos do trabalho, que são: economia comportamental e bolhas no mercado imobiliário. O objectivo principal é avaliar todo o conhecimento existente em ambas as áreas de modo a definir as possíveis lacunas neste conhecimento e como é que a aplicação de teoria económica comportamental pode auxiliar no entendimento da natureza das bolhas. A motivação principal para tal sinergia entre as duas áreas é o facto de que teorias económicas tradicionais não são suficientes para explicar bolhas especulativas como fenómenos. A revisão sistemática da literatura foi possível utilizando como recurso a base de dados Web of Science. A extensão inicial de artigos encontrados com a aplicação das palavraschave foi de 936 artigos. A aplicação de critérios de exclusão, parcialmente feita com o uso de filtros proporcionados pela própria base de dados (linguagem, tipo de documento, área científica), e através da leitura dos abstracts de cada artigo. O resultado da aplicação dos critérios de exclusão foi de 35 artigos. Os critérios de inclusão, aplicados ao ler cuidadosamente o texto de cada artigo na sua totalidade, levou à eliminação de 18 artigos. O conjunto final de artigos é composto por 17. A síntese dos artigos seleccionados mostra que existem provas empíricas que corroboram a correlação entre factores comportamentais e variações de preços durante as bolhas imobiliárias. Encontrou-se provas de que a teoria comportamental pode se revelar eficiente em explicar a natureza da bolha e factores psicológicos devem ser incluídos nos modelos tradicionais de precificação de activos financeiros de modo a melhorar o conhecimento que se tem acerca das bolhas imobiliárias. O desafio que surge da aplicação de conceitos comportamentais é o de que preconceitos psicológicos e seus efeitos são difíceis de medir e quantificar, e dados estatísticos difíceis de colectar. O mercado imobiliário, devido às suas particularidades, também apresenta algumas dificuldades em agregar dados estatísticos. Por exemplo, a baixa liquidez do mercado e certos limites nas transacções permitidas no mercado, restringem consideravelmente a quantidade de dados estatísticos necessários para uma investigação empírica.Background: The behavioral economics theory relies on the concept, that market participants are irrational by their nature and suffer from psychological limitations and cognitive biases. As a result, the money related decisions might be irrational and errored, especially if done under risk and uncertainty. According to the behavioral concept, the real estate market is partially represented by the unsophisticated households and speculative agents. The irrational behavior of such participants might cause sharp deviations of the house prices from the fundamental value and even cause the bubble. The traditional theories and fundamentals are not sufficient enough for studying the nature of the house bubbles. So, behavioral theory is seen as the useful framework for better understanding of the factors, that stand behind the bubble formation. Objective: The goal of this dissertation is to assess the application of the behavioral economics theory to the explanation of the real estate bubbles nature. Method: A systematic literature review was performed in order to identify and assess the application of behavioral economics theory. Results: The initial search, based on the key words, showed 936 papers, that potentially referred to the studied topic. Among these papers, only 17 met our inclusion criteria. The analysis of the selected papers shows that the behavioral factors are correlated with the price deviations during the recent house bubbles and are able to improve the explanation of the nature of the phenomena. Conclusion: After conducting the systematic literature review, we can sum up that behavioral factors should be implemented in the traditional asset price models to improve better understanding of the house bubbles´ nature. The result of our literature review shows what has been done and what can be done in this field. In general, the narrow volume of the final set of the papers means the paucity of the existing studies on application of behavioral approach to the real estate bubbles. The reasons for that are: the prevalence of the traditional theories; complications related to measuring and quantifying the behavioral factors; the relatively low liquidity of the real estate market, that make it difficult to collect the sufficient set of statistical data

    Measuring Social Well Being in The Big Data Era: Asking or Listening?

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    The literature on well being measurement seems to suggest that "asking" for a self-evaluation is the only way to estimate a complete and reliable measure of well being. At the same time "not asking" is the only way to avoid biased evaluations due to self-reporting. Here we propose a method for estimating the welfare perception of a community simply "listening" to the conversations on Social Network Sites. The Social Well Being Index (SWBI) and its components are proposed through to an innovative technique of supervised sentiment analysis called iSA which scales to any language and big data. As main methodological advantages, this approach can estimate several aspects of social well being directly from self-declared perceptions, instead of approximating it through objective (but partial) quantitative variables like GDP; moreover self-perceptions of welfare are spontaneous and not obtained as answers to explicit questions that are proved to bias the result. As an application we evaluate the SWBI in Italy through the period 2012-2015 through the analysis of more than 143 millions of tweets.Comment: 40 pages, 2 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1512.0156
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