This study was designed to examine the impact of different levels of reporting frequency (periodic versus continuous) of financial information, both with and without assurance, on individual investors in a stock price prediction task. Reporting was manipulated at two levels: periodic and continuous. Assurance was manipulated at two levels: no assurance and with assurance. In addition, a base level condition was included. The experiment was designed to collect data regarding both the investors' performance and their perceptions. Period one of the experiment consisted of the base level condition for all participants. Independent variable manipulation was implemented in period two, using a 2 X 2 design. The results indicated that the main effect of Assurance was significant with regard to the number of times participants correctly predicted the change in stock price direction (PREDICTION). The results of the analysis also indicated that the interaction of Reporting and Assurance was significant with regard to the number of times participants made stock price change predictions in accordance with an expectation of mean-reverting stock prices (TRACKING). Post hoc analysis on TRACKING indicated that increased levels of reporting frequency and assurance could adversely affect the quality of individual investors' investment decisions. The results indicated that increased levels of reporting and assurance were not significant with regard to individual investors' perception of source credibility, information relevance or information value. Post hoc analysis provided some evidence that increased levels of reporting frequency may lead to an increase in the perceived trustworthiness of the source of the information and investors may be willing to pay more for the stock of a company that provided increased levels of reporting of fundamental financial data.

This paper examines the effect of the mandatory adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on transparency for investors by measuring the increase in earnings management during the post-adoption period of IFRS. One sign of earnings management is current year earnings being only slightly higher than the previous year’s earnings. An increase in earnings management means a decrease in accounting quality and a decrease of transparency for investors. By comparing firms that mandatorily adopted IFRS to similar benchmark firms in terms of strength of legal enforcement, book-to-market ratios, market values and net incomes, I am able to run empirical regressions examining variables of growth, equity issuance, leverage, debt issuance, turnover, size, cash flow, and time period in order to determine the effect of the adoption on IFRS on earnings growth. After looking at 516 firms from 20 countries for the years of 2002-2007, I conclude that IFRS is decreasing financial reporting quality and decreasing transparency for the investing public, and therefore is not accomplishing its goal of bringing efficiency, accountability, and transparency to global financial markets.

Liquidity risk is a large issue faced by mutual funds. Large funds typically trade in size, and these large sizes often have a significant impact on prices. My hypothesis is that large funds will not invest in illiquid assets as much as smaller funds due to the price sensitivity of illiquid assets. While this seems obvious, the results from this study are not in agreement with this hypothesis. My paper finds that as the illiquidity of a stock increases, so does the probability that a large fund invests in the stock.

In the first chapter, I find counties more likely to be affected by climate change pay more in underwriting fees and initial yields to issue long-term municipal bonds compared to counties unlikely to be affected by climate change. This difference disappears when comparing short-term municipal bonds, implying the market prices climate change risks for long-term securities only. Higher issuance costs for climate risk counties are driven by bonds with lower credit ratings. Investor attention is a driving factor, as the difference in issuance costs on bonds issued by climate and non-climate affected counties increases after the release of the 2006 Stern Review on climate change. In the second chapter, I document the investment value of alternative data and examine how market participants react to the data's dissemination. Using satellite images of parking lots of US retailers, I find a long-short trading strategy based on growth in car count earns an alpha of 1.6% per month. I then show that, after the release of satellite data, hedge fund trades are more sensitive to growth in car count and are more profitable in affected stocks. Conversely, individual investor demand becomes less sensitive to growth in car count and less profitable in affected stocks. Further, the increase in information asymmetry between investors due to the availability of alternative data leads to a decrease in the liquidity of affected firms.

I investigate the impacts that information production, information asymmetry have on firms financing choices 3/4 equity financing or debt financing. I find that equity issue announcements encourage more information production than debt issue announcements, which in turn raises the probability of equity financing. In addition, the post-issue stock market performance is positively associated with information production. The results are robust after controlling for investor optimism. I also apply the Heckmans two-step procedure to jointly investigate firms financing choices and offering costs. I find that security-issuing firms choose the less-costly financing type.

There is a renewed interest in further exploring the significance of culture to the accounting disclosure model in view of a highly competitive global business environment. To date, there is no empirical research to investigate this issue with respect to a specific industry, namely banking. There are three main reasons for focusing only on the banking industry (Hooi 2004). First, it is considered to be the most important industry for the country’s economic and financial stability. Moreover, the IASB has recognised its significance by issuing unique accounting standards i.e. IAS30, IAS32 and IAS39. Second, Saidenberg and Schuermann (2003) argue that with the scope and complexity of Basel II, it provides opportunities for researching issues through Pillar 3. Third, with national banking systems being non-homogenous, it is important to investigate the effects of national culture because prior research has argued that cultural differences have partly explained international differences in disclosure framework of accounting systems. The purpose of this study is to apply and extend Gray’s (1988) theoretical framework of national culture with respect to four research questions. First, to contribute to Gray’s (1988) theory of cultural influence on international banking disclosures. Second, to investigate the possible significance of investor protection to the banking disclosure model. Third, to explore Gray’s (1988) theory on the relationship of national culture to capital market research using banking returns. Fourth, to investigate the value relevance of investor protection and banking disclosures to the returns model. Seventeen developed and developing countries with a representative sample of 37 listed domestic commercial banks were examined in 2004. For the disclosure model, the study finds that national culture is a significant factor in the banking industry. Individualism has been found as the primary cultural dimension for banking disclosures. Moreover, the explanatory power of the model significantly improves with the legal dimensions of common law and anti-director rights. The positive association between common law and banking disclosures is consistent with La Porta et al. (1998) which argue that common law countries with stronger investor protection are more transparent than civil law countries. However, there is a negative association between investor protection variable of anti-director rights with banking disclosures. This may suggest that investor protection does not encourage minority investors to enter the stock market specifically in the global banking industry. This situation may lead to a lack of demand for transparency through a smaller dispersion of ownership across the domestic banks. For the returns model, the study finds that national culture is value relevant in the banking industry. Collectivism and power distance have been found to be the two primary cultural dimensions for banking returns. Moreover, the explanatory power of the model significantly improves with anti-director rights and banking disclosures. These results are (1) consistent with La Porta et al. (2002) which argue that investor protection increases firm valuation with respect to Tobin’s Q and (2) international investors tend to support the Basel Committee’s commitment in providing a more transparent framework by implementing Pillar 3 in the near future, starting with the Basel member countries. Finally, an interesting finding from the study is that firm size has a negative association with banking returns.

This thesis presents three related essays on the dynamic relationship between different types of investment flow and prices in the equity market. These studies attempt to provide greater insight into the evolution of prices by investigating not ???what moves prices??? but ???who moves prices??? by utilising a unique database from the Korean Stock Exchange. The first essay investigates the trading behaviour and performance of online equity investors in comparison to other investors on the Korean stock market. Whilst the usage of online resources for trading is becoming more and more prevalent in financial markets, the literature on the role of online investors and their impact on prices is limited. The main finding arising from this essay supports the claim that online investors are noise traders at an aggregate level. Whereas foreigners show distinct trading patterns as a group in terms of consensus on the direction of market movements, online investors do not show such distinct trading patterns. The essay concludes that online investors do not trade on clear information signals and introduce noise into the market. Direct performance and market timing ability measures further show that online investors are the worst performers and market timers whereas foreign investors consistently show outstanding performance and market timing ability. Domestic mutual funds in Korea have not been extensively researched. The second essay analyses mutual fund activity and relations between stock market returns and mutual fund flows in Korea. Although regulatory authorities have been cautious about introducing competing funds, contractual-type mutual funds have not been cannibalized by the US-style corporate mutual funds that started trading in 1998. Negative feedback trading activity is observed between stock market returns and mutual fund flows, measured as net trading volumes using stock purchases and sales volume. It is predominantly returns that drive flows, although stock purchases contain information about returns, partially supporting the price pressure hypothesis. After controlling for declining markets, the results suggest Korean equity fund managers tend to swing indiscriminately between increasing purchases and increasing sales in times of rising market volatility, possibly viewing volatility as an opportunity to profit and defying the mean-variance framework that predicts investors should retract from the market as volatility increases. Mutual funds respond indifferently to wide dispersions in investor beliefs. The third essay focuses on the conflicting issue of home bias by looking at the impact on domestic prices of foreign trades relative to locals using high frequency data from the Korean Stock Exchange (KSE). This essay extends the work of Choe, Kho and Stulz (2004) (CKS) in three ways. First, it analyses the post-Asian financial crisis period, whereas CKS (2004) analyse the crisis (1996-98) period. Second, this essay adopts a modified version of the CKS method to better capture the aggregate behaviour of each investor-type by utilising the participation ratio in comparison to the CKS method. Third, this essay does not limit investigation to intra-day analysis but extends to daily analysis up to 50 days to observe the effect of intensive trading activity in a longer horizon than the CKS study. In contrast to the CKS findings, this paper finds that foreigners have a short-lived private information advantage over locals and trades by foreigners have a larger impact on prices using intra-day data. However, assuming investors buy-hold for up to 50 days, the local individuals provide a greater impact and more profitable returns than foreigners. Superior performance is documented for buys rather than sells.

<p>Listed corporations achieve effectiveness through segmentation of investors. Categorization of like- minded investors diminishes goal incongruence. This thesis aim to examine an Investor models accuracy, provided by a Professor Emeritus in Economic Psychology in 2001. This model segments investors as active, passive, speculative and naive investors.</p><p> </p><p>This thesis has a demarcation to private investors on the Swedish stock market. It has a deductive and qualitative approach as the purpose is to study the Investor model. In order to obtain empirical data semi- structured interviews were conducted with Avanza Bank, Handelsbanken, Aktiespararna and Karl- Erik Wärneryd, the author of the Investor model. All interviews were carried out by telephone except the face- to- face interview with Karl- Erik Wärneryd.</p><p> </p><p>The conclusion of this thesis is that the Investor model is not universal. The Investor model needs to be modified by the purpose of the sector of the application in order to be accurate. Different factors have influenced investors since 2001 which has subsequently had an effect on the Investor groups’ characteristics.</p>

<p>The purpose of this Bachelor Thesis is to investigate if an independent private investor can form a reliable opinion about an investment company's strategy exclusively by public accessible sources. This is to be conducted by a case study of the investment company Bure Equity. Bure's strategy according to its public communication is compared to its actual performed activities.</p><p>The main results show that Bure follows its overall strategy relatively well. However, ambivalence exists, as they often choose to adapt their strategy to the given situation. With the results of this thesis, Bure's strategy is more understandable, defendable and above all consistent. An independent private investor can in fact gain a trustful picture of Bure's strategy by only having a look at their public documents and the media's publications. This however demands for detailed engagement in the topic. One way to facilitate the evaluation of a strategy for private investors in the future would be a higher transparency of the firm's documents.</p>

Alma mater matters: The value of school ties in the venture capital industry. This paper examines the role and estimates the economic value of social networks tied to academic institutions in the venture capital industry. I show that having a shared academic background increases the likelihood of matching between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists by 57%. Similarly, a shared academic background increases the likelihood of matching between different venture capitalists by 42% when they syndicate portfolio company investments. Finally, a shared academic background improves portfolio company performance. For example, when an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist attended the same Top 3 academic institution, the likelihood that the investment will result in an initial public offering or acquisition increases by 42%. This is the incremental effect of having attended the same Top 3 academic institution. Taken together, these results provide strong evidence that shared academic backgrounds help reduce information gaps in the venture capital industry. Unveiling the secrets of the academy: Alumni networks and university endowment success. This paper shows that when university endowments become limited partners with venture capital firms, the performance of their connected portfolio companies improve relative to non-connected ones. Portfolio companies are connected when any of their entrepreneurs attended the corresponding universities for undergraduateor graduate studies. In a differences-in-differences design I compare initial public offering rates between connected- and non-connected venture capital investments in a treated- and an untreated cohort and estimate this effect to be 6%. Since the unconditional sample mean of initial public offerings is 10%, this is commensurate to a 60% increase in the unconditional initial public offering probability. This effect consists of two separate and potentially different effects, however. First, the effect of obtain a new university endowment as a limited partner, second, the effect of losing an already existing university endowment as a limited partner. Further analysis shows that the main effect is mostly driven by the latter. These results continue to hold in a rich set of robustness checks. Goldrush Dynamics of Private Equity. We present a simple dynamic model of entry and exit in a private equity market with heterogeneous fund managers, a depletable stock of target companies, and learning about investment profitability. Its predictions match a number of stylized facts: Aggregate fund activity follows waves with endogenous transitions from booms to busts. Supply and demand in the private equity market are inelastic, and the supply comoves with investment valuations. High industry performance precedes high entry, which in turn precedes low industry performance. Differences in fund performance are persistent, firsttime funds underperform the industry, and the first-time funds that are raised in boom periods are unlikely to be succeeded by follow-on funds. Fund performance and fund size are positively correlated across private equity firms, but negatively correlated across consecutive funds by the same firm. Finally, boom periods can make ”too much capital chase too few deals”. Ownership Matters: A Clinical Study of Investor Activism. This paper studies the involvement and engagement objectives of an activist investor in an institutional environment characterized by concentrated ownership. It highlights the heterogeneity of the investor’s activism and its focus on operational improvements. It emphasizes the ownership structure of the portfolio companies as important determinants of investor activism. Using a carefully selected set of peer companies, it is possible to show that the investor targets undervalued companies with operational slack that maintain open ownership structures. In particular, by avoiding to invest in companies with other active owners, e.g. families and industrial owners, and seeking to invest in companies with more institutional holdings, the investor ensures that there is not only scope for improvements. There is also a reasonable chance of exercising control. / <p>Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2010. Sammanfattning jämte 4 uppsatser.</p>