1,721,039 research outputs found
Understanding Trading Behavior in 401(k) Plans
Get PDFWe use a new database covering 1.2 million active participants to study trading activities in 1,530 defined contribution retirement plans. Descriptive statistics and regression analysis indicate some interesting trading patterns. First, we show that trading activity in 401(k) accounts is very limited: only 20% of participants ever reshuffled their portfolios in two years. Second, demographic characteristics are strongly associated with trading activities: traders are older, wealthier, more highly paid, male employees with longer plan tenure. Finally, we find that plan design factors, such as the number of funds offered, loan availability, and specific fund-families offered have significant impacts on 401(k) plan participants’ trading behavior. Moreover, on-line access channels stimulate participants to trade more frequently, although they do not increase turnover ratio as much. We conclude that plan design features are crucial in sharing trading patterns in 401(k) plans.
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Essays on financial intermediation
Get PDFIn this dissertation, I analyze behavior of two types of financial intermediaries that play critical roles in capital allocation: ratings agencies and merger advisors. Each type of intermediary survives due to (assumed) informational advantages relative to firms and investors. In the following chapters, I analyze how differences in information between market participants and intermediaries lead to signaling behavior related to privately-observed quality. My results explain some seemingly-anomalous aspects of financial markets, and provide a framework for assessing the impact intermediaries can have on efficient capital allocation.In the first chapter, I examine whether rating agencies strategically manipulate the informativeness of bond ratings in response to competition from private lenders. I model a monopolistic rating agency that caters to a low-quality marginal customer with uninformative ratings. High-quality customers prefer informative ratings but are captive customers of the rating agency in the absence of competition from private lenders. With competition from private lenders, the rating agency uses informative ratings to keep high-quality customers in public markets. The model also suggests that the ratings sector dampens the impact of capital supply shocks, and offers a strategic pricing rationale for the controversial practice of issuing unsolicited credit ratings. In the second chapter, I test predictions of the model using a measure of informativeness based on the impact of unexpected ratings on a debt issuer's borrowing cost. I analyze two events that increased the relative supply of private vs.\ public lending: the temporary shutdown of the high-yield market in 1989 and legislation in 1994 that reduced barriers to interstate bank lending. After each event, I find that the informativeness of ratings increased for issuers whose relative supply of private vs.\ public capital increased most. In the third chapter, I analyze how acquiring firms select and pay advisors. I present a model in which an advisor with privately known quality screens targets (due diligence) and improves negotiation outcomes (bidding). When a transaction involves only bidding, advisors pool by offering fees contingent on a completed transaction. By contrast, a transaction involving due diligence can lead to a separating equilibrium and fixed fees. The model predicts that acquirers use advisor market share instead of stock return-based measures to select advisors when synergies are not observable, and that acquirers with better information about advisor quality pay higher fees. I argue that investors in leveraged buyouts are skilled in acquisitions, and find that they pay higher fees for both mergers and tender offers, controlling for assignment and deal characteristics. They are also less likely to include contingent fees than other acquirers. Results suggest skilled investors use private information about advisor ability to hire advisors, and do so primarily to screen targets rather than to improve negotiation outcomes
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Are individual investors tax savvy? Evidence from retail and discount brokerage accounts
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