Evaluation of current research on stock return predictability

The results of recent replication studies suggest that false positive findings are a big problem in empirical finance. We contribute to this debate by reviewing a sample of articles dealing with the short‐term directional forecasting of the prices of stocks, commodities, and currencies. Screening all relevant articles published in 2016 by one of the 96 journals covered by the Social Sciences Citation Index in the category “Business, Finance,” we select only those studies that use easily accessible data of daily or higher frequency. We examine each study in detail, from the selection of the dataset to the interpretation of the results. We also include empirical analyses to illustrate the shortcomings of certain approaches. There are three main findings from our review. First, the number of selected papers is very low, which is surprising even when the strict selection criteria are taken into account. Second, there are hardly any relevant studies that use high‐frequency data—despite the hype about financial big data and machine learning. Third, the economic significance of the findings—for example, their usefulness for trading purposes—is questionable. In general, apparently good forecasting performance does not translate into profitability once realistic transaction costs and the effect of data snooping are taken into account. Other typical problems include unsuitable benchmarks, short evaluation periods, and nonoperational trading strategies.© 2019 The Author

Individuals' valuation of a publicly provided private good evidence from a field study

This paper assesses the Willingness to Pay (WTP) for a publicly provided bike sharing service whose costs are in large part covered by the municipality of Vienna, Austria. The following characteristics render it valuable for analyses: the possibility to free ride, a (perceived) positive externality of use, negligible income effects, perfect substitutability, and the credibility of valuation scenarios. We also address the disparity between Willingness to Accept (WTA) and WTP, and we find a mean WTP of EUR 1.2 for the bike sharing system and a disparity of 2:1 (WTA to WTP). Female participants as well as respondents who condition their valuation on those of others are willing to contribute more; and surprisingly those who actually use the bike sharing system as well as environmentally concerned respondents have a lower WTP. This Environmental Concern Paradox can be explained by an incorporation of positive externalities into individual valuation decisions.© 2018 The Author(s

Climate Engineering in an Interconnected World: The Role of Tariffs

This paper investigates strategic trade policies as a response to negative externalities linked to climate engineering. Parties negatively affected, or which only perceive damages, may react to geoengineering by deploying trade sanctions, i.e. the imposition of tariffs. By introducing a dynamic trade model, we show that geoengineering-averse countries have an incentive to implement or increase existing tariffs when the other country uses geoengineering. Our contribution is to highlight that potential consequences on trade should be taken into account before climate engineering techniques are applied. This is particularly crucial in our globalized world since a successful climate policy demands large scale if not global cooperation.© The Author(s) 201

How to reveal people’s preferences: Comparing time consistency and predictive power of multiple price list risk elicitation methods

The question of how to measure and classify people’s risk preferences is of substantial importance in the field of economics. Inspired by the multitude of ways used to elicit risk preferences, we conduct a holistic investigation of the most prevalent method, the multiple price list (MPL) and its derivations. In our experiment, we find that revealed preferences differ under various versions of MPLs as well as yield unstable results within a 30-minute time frame. We determine the most stable elicitation method with the highest forecast accuracy by using multiple measures of within-method consistency and by using behavior in two economically relevant games as benchmarks. A derivation of the well-known method by Holt and Laury (American Economic Review 92(5):1644–1655, 2002), where the highest payoff is varied instead of probabilities, emerges as the best MPL method in both dimensions. As we pinpoint each MPL characteristic’s effect on the revealed preference and its consistency, our results have implications for preference elicitation procedures in general.© The Author(s

Macroeconomic Forecasting with Factor-Augmented Adjusted Band Regression

Previous findings indicate that the inclusion of dynamic factors obtained from a large set of predictors can improve macroeconomic forecasts. In this paper, we explore three possible further developments: (i) using automatic criteria for choosing those factors which have the greatest predictive power; (ii) using only a small subset of preselected predictors for the calculation of the factors; and (iii) utilizing frequency-domain information for the estimation of the factor models. Reanalyzing a standard macroeconomic dataset of 143 U.S. time series and using the major measures of economic activity as dependent variables, we find that (i) is not helpful, whereas focusing on the low-frequency components of the factors and disregarding the high-frequency components can actually improve the forecasting performance for some variables. In the case of the gross domestic product, a combination of (ii) and (iii) yields the best results.© 2019 by the author

Pharmaceutical regulation in Europe and its impact on corporate R&D

Objectives: Many European countries regulate the markets for prescription drugs in order to cope with rising health expenditures. On the other hand, regulation distorts incentives to invest in pharmaceutical R&D. This study aims at empirically assessing the impact of regulation on pharmaceutical R&D expenditures. Methods: We analyze a sample of 20 leading pharmaceutical companies between 2000 and 2008. The share of sales in Europe serves as a proxy for the degree of pharmaceutical regulation. We control for other firm specific determinants of R&D such as cash flow, company size, leverage ratio, growth rate, and Tobin¿s q. Results: Our results suggest a nonlinear relationship between European sales ratio and R&D intensity. Beyond a threshold of 33% of sales generated in Europe, a higher presence in Europe is associated with lower R&D investments. Conclusion: The results can be interpreted as further evidence of the deteriorating effect of regulation on firm¿s incentives to invest in R&D

An investigation of salespeople’s nonverbal behaviors and their effect on charismatic appearance and favorable consumer responses

The concept of charisma has gained considerable interest among social scientists in multiple disciplines. Nevertheless, research on charisma in the marketing field is scarce, and little is known about which specific nonverbal behaviors predict perceived charisma and lead to positive consumer responses. Therefore, the aim of this article is to identify nonverbal behaviors that lead to a salesperson’s perceived charisma in a personal selling context by means of high-precision, time-locked coding. This research explores aspects of body language that differentiate salespeople from each other and investigates whether such differences are antecedents of perceived charisma. The findings indicate that certain arm actions, arm postures, and action functions have a significant effect on charismatic appearance and can in turn produce favorable attitudes toward the salesperson.© The Author