BI Open (Norwegian Business School)
Not a member yet
6706 research outputs found
Sort by
On the nexus between Gender, Financial Literacy, and Household Finance
Get PDFMasteroppgave(MSc) in Master of Science in Business - Handelshøyskolen BI, 2024This thesis analyzes the relationship between gender and financial literacy of household heads, as well as the composition and returns of their financial portfolios, using data from the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW). The analysis reveals that male household heads and financially sophisticated investors achieve higher returns, likely due to their more active participation in risky assets. Furthermore, the level of financial literacy matters more for male household heads than female household heads. Importantly, female heads (with a similar level of financial sophistication as male heads) earn similar returns by investing in other risky assets, such as bonds and mutual funds, rather than equity, even if they create more prudent investment portfolios than their male counterparts.
Keywords: Household Finance, Gender, Financial Literacy, Portfolio Choic
Forecasting Global Energy Commodity Prices: A Systematic Approach to Forecast Combination
Get PDFMasteroppgave(MSc) in Master of Science in Business, Economics - Handelshøyskolen BI, 2024We investigate the accuracy of different forecasts of the global real price of
oil and natural gas, on a monthly basis. In particular, we investigate whether
combinations of forecasts including newer models are more accurate than those
using only older state-of-the-art models from the literature.
Our new model combinations outperform previous state-of-the-art models when
predicting both real oil and natural gas prices. For oil, the new combinations
reduce MSPE ratios relative to the no-change forecast by an average of 4
percentage points compared to the old combinations. For natural gas, the
reductions are on average 6 percentage points. Additionally, we find that using
equal weights provide the highest accuracy for real oil price forecasts. On the
other hand, for the real price of natural gas, the lowest MSPEs are achieved
with performance-based weights derived from forecast errors from the past 24
months.
We also examine how using different indicators of global activity in our VAR
and BVAR models impacts the combined forecasts. We find that the most
accurate forecasts are obtained using the real commodity price factor (RCPF)
for the real price of oil and world industrial production (WIP) for the real price
of natural gas. Moreover, we find that using production-based VAR and BVAR
models in our combination has the overall best performance for the real price
of oil. In contrast, using consumption-based VAR and BVAR models is best
for the combined forecasts of the real price of natural gas
Parent and community political orientation predicts children's health behaviours
Get PDFDoes political partisanship extend to childhood? To what degree are children, a largely non-political population, impacted by parents’ and communities’ political orientations? We examined children's behaviours and attitudes during a politically divisive event – the COVID-19 pandemic. Children (4- to 12-year-olds; N = 313) of liberal (vs. conservative) parents reported greater preventive COVID-19 behaviours, such as mask wearing and physical distancing, and responded more positively to these health behaviours. At the community level, children living in Democratic-voting (vs. Republican-voting) U.S. counties more strongly endorsed preventive COVID-19 behaviours. Political orientation was a better predictor than education, income, religiosity, population-density, and infection rates. Mediation and moderation analyses revealed that the parent–child political link was driven by children's perceptions of their parents' guidance, behaviours, and concern about COVID-19, and that this link was attenuated in Democratic- versus Republican-voting counties. Political orientation appears to play an unexpectedly prominent role, both at the intimate family and broader community level, in determining children's behaviours and attitudes.publishedVersio
Applying Neural Networks for Day-Ahead Electricity Price Forecasting in the Nord Pool Market
Get PDFMasteroppgave(MSc) in Master of Science in Business Analytics, Handelshøyskolen BI, 2024In the current volatile energy market, electricity price forecasting presents significant challenges, mainly because of the unique and unpredictable nature of electricity prices after the European energy crisis in 2022. While there has been considerable research on electricity price forecasting, this specific period after 2022 has not been extensively studied. This thesis addresses this by implementing and evaluating various forecasting models to predict the day-ahead system price in the Nord Pool market, using artificial neural networks and traditional benchmark models. Two neural networks have been implemented: the Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). The benchmarks include the naïve forecast, and the statistical time series models ARIMA and SARIMA. Results show that the neural networks significantly outperform the benchmark models across all error metrics for the entire evaluation period. The MLP emerged as the best-performing model among the neural networks, surpassing the LSTM in every error metric evaluated. Additionally, the MLP shows superior capability in handling price spikes, making it effective for the current market conditions
Customer Perceived Innovation: Considerations for Financial Performance and Methodological Approaches
Get PDFAs firms increasingly uncover their activities to key stakeholders through various media, the perception of these activities is becoming more important for firm performance. Traditionally, access to industry-wide databases provides important metrics on customer perceptions of performance, such as customer satisfaction and brand equity. In addition, numerous studies have highlighted firms’ innovation-related actions (e.g., R&D spending and patent counts) as critical metrics linked to their financial performance. Perceived Firm Innovation (PFI) emerges as a relatively new and under-studied metric with the potential to impact a firm’s financial success. Keiningham et al. are among the pioneers in this area. This commentary views their article as a vital initial step in understanding PFI’s impact. Considering that the service sector accounts for over 70 percent of the GDP in any developed country, service innovation is a broad phenomenon. Given the breadth of the area, we point to the challenge of capturing this phenomenon with a single metric like PFI. We also discuss crucial methodological considerations for future research, including estimation methods, sample size, and financial metrics.publishedVersio
Machine Learning the Cross-Section of Corporate Bond Excess Returns
Get PDFMasteroppgave(MSc) in Master of Science in Quantitative Finance - Handelshøyskolen BI, 2024We use machine learning, to predict the cross-section of corporate bond excess returns, both directly and via rank-transformations. We find some evidence that non-linearities matter for corporate bond excess return predictions and that using untransformed fea-tures produces the best out-of-sample results for the non-linear models. However, the fragility of the models in terms of the han-dling of outliers and transformation of features is something that needs careful consideration when trying to predict corporate bond excess returns. We also find that a forecast’s OOS-R2 is not nec-essarily a good indication of portfolio performance
Do macroeconomic factors influence the returns of the UK stock market?
Get PDFMasteroppgave(MSc) in Master of Science in Business, Finance - Handelshøyskolen BI, 2024Our thesis investigates the influence of macroeconomic factors on stock prices in the UK, with a specific focus on the FTSE 350 stock market index. This analysis integrates a comprehensive review of previous studies with ongoing evaluation of recent data spanning from 1998 to 2022, concerning stock returns and macroeconomic factors. Our findings indicate that the Consumer Price Index (CPI), Unemployment rate, Money Supply and The Risk-Free rate show a significant impact on the stock market returns
Emission Reduction Initiatives: A Path to Abnormal Returns?
Get PDFMasteroppgave(MSc) in Master of Science in Business, Finance - Handelshøyskolen BI, 2024This thesis investigates whether firms who invest in emission reduction initiatives
yield higher returns than those who abstain from them by drawing upon datasets
which cover the period 2010-2022, for 2.174 companies. We find statistically
significant evidence that emission reduction initiatives have a negative impact on
a firm's abnormal returns in 2021-2022, and no statistically significant impact in
the years before. Furthermore, we investigate the impact of major policy shocks
on the carbon premium and emission reduction initiatives, and find no significant
impact of policy shocks on the level of emission reduction investments and no
strong correlation between emission intensity and such investments
How do cross-border M&A transactions in the Nordic countries impact acquiring firms’ performance, both in the short- and long-term?
Get PDFMasteroppgave(MSc) in Master of Science in Business, Finance - Handelshøyskolen BI, 2024This study investigates the impact of cross-border M&A transactions on the performance of acquiring firms in the Nordic countries from 2011 to 2020. Using the classical event study methodology, the findings indicate significant positive short term returns, suggesting value creation for acquirers. The method of payment, particularly stock transactions, is the only significant factor influencing short-term returns. Long-term analysis shows marginal positive effects in the first year and marginal negative effects in the following years, but these results are insignificant. Industry relatedness and deal value positively impact firm performance
Hva er drivkraften til Trond Giske?
Get PDFExecutive Master of Management i Ledelse, makt og mening fra Handelshøyskolen BI, 2024Jeg har i denne oppgaven ønsket å undersøke hva som er drivkraften til Trond Giske. Giske er en norsk politiker som gjorde sitt inntog på den politiske arenaen på midten av 1990-tallet. Han ble tidlig beskrevet som et politisk talent av de sjeldne og er av mange sett på som en fremtidig statsminister. Historien har vist at Giske, så langt, ikke er i nærheten av å være en statsministerkandidat og det har i perioder vært mye uro rundt Trond Giske. Ofte så mye at hans politikk har druknet i denne uroen. Til tross for at Giske gjentatte ganger har forsvunnet ut av politikken har han like mange ganger vist at han kan komme tilbake og at han gang på gang klarer å engasjere og mobilisere tilhengere, samt komme i posisjon.
Det er nettopp dette jeg ønsket å undersøke nærmere og som dannet grunnlaget for problemstillingen: Hva er drivkraften til Trond Giske? For å belyse denne problemstillingen har jeg fokusert på tre underproblemstillinger som stiller spørsmål om Trond Giske har en kongstanke, om han er en machiavellisk leder og til slutt om velvilje er Giske sin retoriske kraft. For å belyse disse problemstillingene har jeg benyttet meg av begreper og teorier om kongstanke, machiavellisk lederskap og maktspill, samt teori om velvilje som retorisk virkemiddel.
Trond Giske synes i stor grad å være drevet av en kongstanke som omhandler at politikk skal handle om vanlige menneskers liv og vanlige menneskers utfordringer og problemer. Samtidig kan Giske også sies å være en machiavellisk leder da han gang på gang viser at han er villig til å bruke makt for å vinne politiske kamper. Når det gjelder velvilje som retorisk virkemiddel viser også et utvalg av Giske sine taler at han helt bevisst bruker velvilje for å vise at han forstår tilhørernes utfordringer, problemer og liv. Drivkraften til Trond Giske er sammensatt, men synes å være en kombinasjon av en tydelig kongstanke, kombinert med et ønske om makt, og ikke minst, en vilje til å bruke makten. Hans retorikk og bruk av velvilje appeller viser seg også gang på gang som et bevisst virkemiddel. Metoden som er benyttet er hermeneutisk metode hvor min forforståelse stadig har endret og modnet seg gjennom vandringen i den hermeneutiske sirkel