Many retail investors find it difficult to choose financial products and seek the advice of professionals. Women are increasingly becoming an important client segment for the financial advice industry. To the extent that women follow the advice they receive, the quality of this advice can have important consequences for gender inequality in wealth and women ... Read More

An unexpected death in an apartment can cause a 20% drop in the property’s sale price and further impact those on the same floor, in the same block, and on the same estate, according to HKUST’s Utpal Bhattacharya and colleagues. Focusing on Hong Kong’s real estate market, the authors show that such “haunted houses” can have a sustained negative impact on the ... Read More

An unexpected death in an apartment can cause a 20% drop in the property’s sale price and further impact those on the same floor, in the same block, and on the same estate, according to HKUST’s Utpal Bhattacharya and colleagues. Focusing on Hong Kong’s real estate market, the authors show that such “haunted houses” can have a sustained negative impact on the ... Read More

The paper looks at how superstitions affect financial markets by examining limit orders (an offer to trade shares at a given price) in the Taiwanese stock market. The authors measured the strength of traders’ superstitions by the regularity with which they chose prices ending in eight, and how strenuously they avoided the number four. Institutional investors ... Read More

Technological innovation plays a key role in promoting a nation’s long-term economic growth and competitive advantage. When it comes to innovation, politics is an important factor to consider, as politicians have the ability to implement policy or regulatory changes that can affect a nation’s innovation incentives. To examine the effects of politics on ... Read More

Whether it is believing in something lucky, like a four-leaf clover, or in bad omens such as breaking a mirror or walking under a ladder, superstition exists around the world. In Chinese culture, for example, the number ‘8’ is believed to be lucky, whereas the number ‘4’ is unlucky. This is because in Mandarin, the pronunciation of ‘8’ sounds like ‘good ... Read More

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have been one of the most successful product innovations in the finance industry. Among their attractions is the potential to help individual investors attain theoretically-sound portfolios – those that are well-diversified and low-cost. Since the first ETF was launched in 1990, their numbers have mushroomed such that the assets ... Read More

When firms announce they will repurchase shares, the market tends to see this as good news and responds positively – even though there is no requirement on the firm to actually repurchase. In fact, a number of firms never do so. So why does the market react as it does? Researchers Utpal Bhattacharya and Stacey Jacobsen think they have an answer: the ... Read More

Standard models of financial markets assume people behave rationally. Behavioral finance builds on this foundation by taking insights from cognitive psychology to explain puzzling observations in asset prices that cannot be explained by reason. To illustrate, Prof. Utpal BHATTACHARYA will give three examples from his research on behavioral finance ... Read More

If your new public company survives the first three years of life – the chances are that you are well on the way to success in the corporate world. So how can you help avoid “corporate mortality” in those early years? Financial intermediaries play a more important role than you think. One of the distinct advantages of corporations over other business forms ... Read More