Rafał Wolski, Monika Bolek, Jerzy Gajdka, Janusz Brzeszczyński and Ali M. Kutan
This study aims to answer the question whether investment funds managers exhibit behavioural biases in their investment decisions. Furthermore, it investigates if fund managers…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to answer the question whether investment funds managers exhibit behavioural biases in their investment decisions. Furthermore, it investigates if fund managers, as a group of institutional investors, make decisions in response to central bank’s communication as well as other information in relation to various behavioural inclinations.
Design/methodology/approach
A comprehensive study was conducted based on a questionnaire, which is composed of three main parts exploring: (1) general information about the funds under the management of the surveyed group of fund managers, (2) factors that influence the investment process with an emphasis on the National Bank of Poland communication and (3) behavioural inclinations of the surveyed group. Cronbach’s alpha statistic was applied for measuring the reliability of the survey questionnaire and then chi-squared test was used to investigate the relationships between the answers provided in the survey.
Findings
The central bank’s communication matters for investors, but its impact on their decisions appears to be only moderate. Interest rates were found to be the most important announcements for investment fund managers. The stock market was the most popular market segment where the investments were made. The ultra-short time horizon played no, or only small, role in the surveyed fund managers’ decisions as most of them invested in a longer horizon covering 1 to 5 years. Moreover, most respondents declared that they considered in their decisions the information about market expectations published in the media. Finally, majority of the fund managers manifested limited rationality and were subject to behavioural biases, but the decisions and behavioural inclinations were independent and, in most cases, they did not influence each other.
Practical implications
The results reported in this study can be used in practice to better understand and to improve the fund managers’ decision-making processes.
Originality/value
Apart from the commonly tested behavioural biases in the group of institutional investors in the existing literature, such as loss aversion, disposition effect or overconfidence, this paper also focuses on the less intensively analysed behavioural inclinations, i.e. framing, illusion of the control, representativeness, sunk cost effect and fast thinking. The originality of this study further lies in the way the research was conducted through interviews with fund managers, who were found to be subject to behavioural biases, although those behavioural inclinations did not influence their investment decisions. This finding indicates that professionalism and collectivism in the group of institutional investors protect them from irrationality.
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Janusz Brzeszczyński, Jerzy Gajdka, Tomasz Schabek and Ali M Kutan
This study contributes to the pool of knowledge about the impact of monetary policy communication of central banks on financial instruments' prices and assets' value in emerging…
Abstract
Purpose
This study contributes to the pool of knowledge about the impact of monetary policy communication of central banks on financial instruments' prices and assets' value in emerging markets.
Design/methodology/approach
Empirical analysis is executed using the National Bank of Poland (NBP) announcements about its monetary policy covering the data from the broad financial market in its three main segments: stock market, foreign exchange market and bonds market. The reactions are measured relative to the changes in the NBP announcements and also with respect to investors' expectations. Autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH) models with dummy variables are used as the main methodological tool.
Findings
Bonds market and foreign exchange market are the most sensitive market segments, while interest rate and money supply are the most influential types of announcements. The changes of the revealed new macroeconomic figures had more impact on assets' prices movements than the deviations from their expectations. Moreover, greater diversity of the Monetary Policy Council (MPC) members' opinions on the voted motions, captured in the MPC voting reports, is associated with more cases of statistically significant NBP communication events.
Practical implications
The findings have direct relevance for fund managers, portfolio analysts, investors and also for financial market regulators.
Originality/value
The results provide novel evidence about how the emerging financial market responds to monetary policy announcements. They help understand the nature of the impact of public information on financial assets' valuation and on movements of their prices, analysed comprehensively in three market segments, in the emerging market environment.
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Tawfik Azrak, Buerhan Saiti, Ali Kutan and Engku Rabiah Adawiah Engku Ali
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether higher disclosure levels at both Islamic and conventional banks are associated with higher stock price volatility in the member…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether higher disclosure levels at both Islamic and conventional banks are associated with higher stock price volatility in the member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
Design/methodology/approach
To do this, the authors build a disclosure index (DI) for both types of banks and compare their transparency levels. After that, the authors evaluate the relationship between disclosure and stock price volatility for both conventional and Islamic banks (IBs) and include macro- and bank-level control factors to isolate the effect of disclosure from potentially confounding influences by employing panel data.
Findings
The author find that the significance of the DI on stock price volatility is economically negligible at both types of banks, suggesting that injecting more information into markets would raise stock price volatility only slightly and hence will not have much economically significant effect on stock price volatility in our sample countries. The authors discuss the policy implications of the findings.
Originality/value
The study fills the gap in the literature and assists in formulating appropriate regulation policies for corporate governance disclosure requirements. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first empirical study to investigate the impact of disclosure on reducing stock price volatility in the dual banking system of the GCC countries.
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Jose Eduardo Gomez-Gonzalez, Ali Kutan, Jair N. Ojeda-Joya and Camila Ortiz
This paper tests the impact of the financial structure of banks on the bank lending channel of monetary policy transmission in Colombia.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper tests the impact of the financial structure of banks on the bank lending channel of monetary policy transmission in Colombia.
Design/methodology/approach
We use a monthly panel of 51 commercial banks for the period 1996:4–2014:8.
Findings
An increase in the monetary policy interest rate significantly reduces bank loan growth. The magnitude of this effect depends on banks’ financial structure. Additionally, we identify an asymmetric effect in which the bank lending channel is stronger in monetary contractions than during expansions. We show that this behavior is due to the heterogeneous response of banks with different levels of solvency. This finding has important implications for the design and implementation of monetary policy and coordination of central bank’s policy with key economic agents.
Practical implications
The fact that the BLC is stronger in times of monetary contraction is quite interesting for central banking, as it shows that monetary policy transmission is harder during macroeconomic downturns. When investment plans are depressed, monetary stimulus may prove insufficient to reactivate credit demand. This has proven to be true in advanced economies after a strong recession and our results suggest that is also true in emerging market economies for economic downturns in general. Central banks may have to provide stronger shocks to reactivate private credit when the economy is facing a slow economic recovery.
Originality/value
Our findings point out that an increase in the monetary policy interest rate significantly reduces bank loan growth. However, the magnitude of this effect critically depends on two aspects. First, bank heterogeneity matters. Particularly, the loan supply of better capitalized banks is less sensitive to monetary policy shocks. Second, the response of credit supply to shifts in short-term interest rates critically depends on the monetary policy stance. The BLC is stronger in times of monetary contraction than during expansions. Moreover, we show that this asymmetric behavior is due to the heterogeneous response of banks with different levels of solvency to the monetary policy stance.
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Ali Kutan, Usama Laique, Fiza Qureshi, Ijaz Ur Rehman and Faisal Shahzad
The extant literature provides substantial evidence that various facets of national culture play a significant role in corporate financial decision making. We systematically…
Abstract
Purpose
The extant literature provides substantial evidence that various facets of national culture play a significant role in corporate financial decision making. We systematically review the role of national culture on the various thematic domains of corporate financial decision making to outline what have been studies thus far and what needs to be studied.
Design/methodology/approach
Keywords such as national culture, organizational culture, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, risk aversion and individualism for a search in the prominent academic literature databases are used. The studies related to the corporate financial decision making that is tied with these keywords are identified and selected for the systematic review.
Findings
The review of extant literature suggests strong evidence that national culture has a significant role in influencing corporate cash holding, corporate risk-taking, individual behaviour of the financial managers and initial public offering by the corporations. The review also indicates, although extant studies have examined the role of national culture in the key corporate financial decisions, evidence on the role of national culture in the firm's investment efficiency aspects is rather scarce. Also, what explains the role of national culture in corporate financial decision making has not been empirically exploited through causal mechanisms.
Practical implications
The findings of the studies help advance our understanding of the current research status concerning the role played by the national culture in shaping corporate financial decisions and raise important future calls.
Originality/value
To best of our knowledge, no prior study has systematically reviewed the role of national culture in the thematic domains of corporate financial decision making.
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Nahla Samargandi, Kazi Sohag, Ali Kutan and Maha Alandejani
The authors reinforce the existing literature on the effect of overall globalization on institutional quality (IQ), while incorporating the effects of economic, political and…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors reinforce the existing literature on the effect of overall globalization on institutional quality (IQ), while incorporating the effects of economic, political and social aspects of globalization, human capital, government expenditure and population growth. To this end, the authors estimate panel data models for a sample of 36 member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) during 1984–2016.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors employ the cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL) approach.
Findings
The study’s investigation affirms the presence of an inverted U-shaped (nonlinear) relation between overall globalization and IQ indexes for the sample countries, which suggests no additional room for improvement in IQ. It also underpins the existence of an inverted-U-shaped (nonlinear) relation between political globalization and IQ. In contrast, economic and social globalizations have a U-shaped relation with IQ, implying more scope for improvement.
Research limitations/implications
The findings have key policy implications. First, policy makers should consider a long-run approach for improving IQ and globalization over time. Second, quick reforms in the short run may not improve IQ.
Practical implications
The results suggest that policy makers should approach the globalization process from a long-run perspective as well by designing appropriate strategies to provide a continuous but gradual increase in globalization so as to systematically monitor the threshold limits to IQ from improving globalization
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is the first to empirically investigate the overall role of globalization in promoting IQ under the conditions of short-run heterogeneity and long-run homogeneity. The authors focus on the member countries of the OIC, many of which are ruled by authoritarian regimes and suffer from a poor domestic institutional setting.
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Bushra Sarwar, Ali Kutan, Xiao Ming and Muhammad Husnain
The purpose of this paper is to examine the importance of market imperfection, namely, variation in managerial ability (MA), on dividend policy in China. The authors focus on the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the importance of market imperfection, namely, variation in managerial ability (MA), on dividend policy in China. The authors focus on the Chinese market as it is dominated by state-owned enterprises and test whether the association between MA and dividend policy varies systematically with the degree of state ownership.
Design/methodology/approach
To measure MA, this study exploits a novel measure developed by Demerjian et al. (2012) to estimate how efficiently manager utilizes firm’s resources. Manager efficiency is defined in terms of output a manager produces based on inputs available within firm.
Findings
The authors find that relationship between MA and dividend policy is primarily driven by non-state own enterprises compare to state own enterprises, more prevalent for financially unconstrained firms with strong balance sheet and more pronounced under high marketized groups as compare to low marketized groups. These finding are robust under battery of robustness checks. This research adds new insight for the policy makers and investors to pay more attention on MA.
Practical implications
This research adds new insight for the policy makers and investors to pay more attention on MA.
Originality/value
This study augments the dividend policy literature by relaxing perfect capital market assumption of Miller and Modigliani, and neo-classic view of firms by incorporating a new novel factor – variation in MA – and applies it to the emerging market of China.
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Shawkat Hammoudeh, Seong-Min Yoon and Ali Kutan
Motivated by the news media and a lack of comprehensive research on the USA, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between changes in road fatalities and…
Abstract
Purpose
Motivated by the news media and a lack of comprehensive research on the USA, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between changes in road fatalities and gasoline prices, per capita disposable personal income, alcohol consumption per adult, blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limits and gender.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employs both static and dynamic panel data models, making use of annual data over the 2000–2013 period collected from the 50 states of the USA and the consistent system GMM estimators of the parameters, to estimate the impact of these variables on fatalities per 100,000 persons and per 100,000 vehicles.
Findings
The results highlight the importance of gasoline prices in determining the level of road fatalities, underscoring that a 10 percent decrease in gasoline prices leads to a 248 increase in the total number of road fatalities, but with many more injuries. Increases in the female-to-total driver ratio have a greater significant positive impact on road fatalities where a 10 percent increase in this ratio increases road fatalities by 1,008 deaths. Increases in registered vehicles per capita also increase the number of fatalities. Other variables such as alcohol consumption per adult and BAC limits are not as important. Policy implications are also provided.
Research limitations/implications
The results of this study highlight the importance of gasoline prices in determining the number of road fatalities. This factor can be an effective policy measure by which policymakers can offset increases in fatalities due to further drastic declines in future gasoline prices. But the effects of the gasoline prices in determining the number of road fatalities are not as strong as the media would lead us to believe. The media ignores the impact of other factors on fatalities, which results in an overestimation of the impact of gasoline prices.
Originality/value
This study uses the panel data of 50 US states and the dynamic panel data model. In addition to gasoline price effects on the road fatalities, this study also considers other factors such as gender, gasoline taxes, per capita disposable personal income, per capita alcohol consumption, BAC limits and number of registered vehicles.
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Ayşe Y. Evrensel and Ali M. Kutan
The fact that previous studies regarding the effects of social violence on foreign direct investment (FDI) flows come to contradictory conclusions motivates this paper. Therefore…
Abstract
Purpose
The fact that previous studies regarding the effects of social violence on foreign direct investment (FDI) flows come to contradictory conclusions motivates this paper. Therefore, it seeks to investigate the social violence‐FDI relationship in an ethnically heterogeneous and resource‐rich country, Indonesia.
Design/methodology/approach
The theoretical framework of the paper examines the social violence‐FDI relationship and identifies the circumstances under which social violence in the host country adversely affects FDI inflows. The empirical analysis uses a unique dataset that consists of FDI flows and different types of social violence in 26 provinces of Indonesia during the period 1992‐2001. A fixed‐effects regression is applied to estimate the effects of social violence on FDI flows in Indonesian provinces.
Findings
The results indicate that only certain types of social violence such as ethnic and industrial relations violence are detrimental to FDI. Multinational firms seem to differentiate among the several types of social violence and respond only to those that may affect their expected future profits.
Practical implications
The immediate policy implication of this result implies that developing countries having the desire to attract FDI flows should be aware of the fact that multinational firms seem to differentiate among the several types of social violence and respond only to those that may affect their expected future profits.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the literature in two ways. First, the dataset employed in the empirical analysis is unique in that it contains different types of social violence and associated damage in a country. Second and because of the first point, the empirical findings provide an explanation of the conflicting results reported in the literature regarding the social violence‐FDI relationship.