The occurence of financial contagion can lead to hazardous results for financial institutions, financial markets as well as for the whole economy. Therefore it can have even serious economic effects on everybody´s life. That is why it is of great interest to deeper understand its characteristics. As classical finance theory seems not to give the best answers to this topic, the young academic field of behavioural finance can deliver new insights. The main purpose of this work is to provide an introduction mainly to professionals in portfolio and risk management and help them to tackle the problem of contagion at an early stage. Therefore not only aspects of behavioural finance are discussed, but the topic contagion is also brought into connection with network analyses and the current regulation process. Our paper can not answer all questions related to contagion, but it can help the reader to better understand its main aspects and enables him to delve deeper into this field.

This thesis is an attempt to advance our understanding of investor behaviour in one of the world’s largest markets, i.e. the mutual fund industry. It consists of three essays that answer the following questions: Does investor fund-selection ability explain the impressive growth of the U.K. mutual fund industry? Does the behaviour of U.S. mutual fund investors vary across the business cycle? And, how do investors react to U.S. mutual fund name changes? The first essay explores the role of investor fund-selection ability in explaining the growth of the mutual fund industry given that previous studies find that mutual funds underperform their benchmarks on average. I examine such ability in the context of the remarkable growth experienced by U.K. mutual funds during the decade of 2000-2010. Using three alternative measures of selection ability and two for performance measurement, I find that fund-selection ability is explained away by the momentum factor due to investors naively chasing recent winners. In addition, this essay is the first to examine the impact of fund visibility on selection ability. I find that fund visibility is an important factor in the investment decision-making process, and one that fund managers can potentially manipulate to their advantage. The second essay is motivated by recent findings that benchmark-adjusted returns to the fund industry are positive in periods of economic contractions. Previous literature is silent on investor behaviour in the face of superior average returns. This essay fills the gap in literature by examining investor’s fund-selection ability across the business cycle. I examine U.S. fund data from 1970-2011 and find that while genuine selection ability does not exist in any period, investors do behave differently across the business cycle. Specifically, investors no longer chase recent winners during contractions, despite no change in fund performance consistency. Instead, I find that investors are more concerned about controlling their risk exposure, especially to the market, during periods of economic downturn. The third essay examines investor reactions to U.S. mutual fund name changes, following the adoption of a new SEC ruling in 2001 to curtail misleading names. We uncover striking evidence that funds continue to undertake cosmetic name changes, and that such changes appear to mislead investors. I find that investors react more positively to cosmetic name changes than non-cosmetic ones. This result is not driven by marketing efforts. Instead, further examination reveals that this arises because cosmetic name changes frequently include industry ‘buzzwords’ in the new name, a tactic that is rewarded with higher flows to such funds. I also find that additional name changes by a fund continue to attract significant flows, although the magnitude of the flows decreases over each successive event. This essay provides compelling evidence in favour of investor irrationality and has implications for both practitioners and academics.

A central topic in behavioural finance is extensive trading. One of the most common behav- ioural explanations for this phenomenon is overconfidence. In finance, overconfident traders feel that their information is sufficient to justify a trade even though it is not. Investors who consider themselves to be above average in their level of expertise show higher trading volumes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the trading volume in the financial markets increased significantly. Further, young and inexperienced traders entered financial markets and volatility increased. Overconfidence could provide explanations for some of these financial market particularities. The study of Glaser and Weber (2007), which investigates the correlation of overconfidence and trading volume, lays the foundation for this study. We extend their research with a survey testing the degree of overconfidence and trading volume during COVID-19. The central aim of the thesis is to investigate to what extent overconfidence influences the trading volume during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis is unable to show a significant positive effect of overconfidence on the trading volume during COVID-19. But our research supports the findings that younger and inexperienced traders entered the market during 2020, who are on average more overconfident than experienced traders. The results further show that retail investors with more than two years of trading experience have significantly increased their trading volume during COVID-19. The analysis also provides evidence that during the COVID- 19 pandemic, traders who assign themselves above average within their investment skills traded significantly more.

Background: The traditional neoclassical model of finance has assumed that all individuals act rationally and that they update their beliefs according to the information they have obtained to maximise their utility. This concept has been challenged by behavioural finance which has over the past decades become a new approach to better understand certain behaviours. Behavioural finance is a broad area which can be divided into different areas. One of them is investor behaviour, which will be the focus of this thesis. Research has shown that investors do not act rationally when deciding how much risk to take when considering an investment. Instead, it has been found that there are other factors that influence risk-taking in an investment, for instance gender, income, marital status and age. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to better understand if a selected group of demographic factors can affect the risk attitude investors in Sweden have with regard to their investments and to determine how well these factors explain the level of risk. The chosen demographic factors are gender, age, marital status and income. Method: This study is conducted using a deductive approach and employing a quantitative research method. A multinomial logistic regression was performed in the statistical program R. The data used is secondary data collected from financial counselling meetings of 111,265 clients during the period of 2018-01-03 to 2019-04-04. It is gathered from one of Sweden’s largest bank who measures customers’ risk tolerance by using a risk assessment tool that categorises risk tolerance into five levels where one is the lowest and five is the highest. Conclusion: Statistically significant results confirm that that the selected demographic factors have an effect on the risk level an investor takes. Males have higher risk tolerance than women, the older an individual is, the less risk the person wants to take, married people have higher risk tolerance than those that are not, and risk tolerance increases slightly with income.

This thesis consists of three essays in behavioral finance: One for the Gain, Three for the Loss is a study of loss aversion in portfolio choice. Using historical returns, I find that the pain of a loss must be greater than three times the pleasure of a gain for investors to hold finitely leveraged portfolios. For lower rates of loss aversion, in particular those proposed in the earlier experimental literature, portfolio allocation to risky assets is infinite. All Guts, No Glory: Trading and Diversification among Online Investors explores the cross-sectional portfolio performance of 16,831 investors at an online discount brokerage firm. Investors hold undiversified portfolios, show a strong preference for risk, and trade aggressively. I show that investors with high portfolio turnover underperform their benchmarks. The degree of diversification, a proxy for investor skill, has a separate and distinct positive effect on performance. Equity Mutual Fund Flows and Stock Returns in Sweden uses time series methods to characterize the relation between unexpected flows to equity mutual funds and returns on the Swedish stock market. I find that concurrent unexpected flows and returns are strongly positively correlated. Unexpected flows have a distinct effect on returns even when other risk factors are considered. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2004

Collective investments have become a very popular investment vehicle in South Africa because it is, among other things, transparent, liquid and easily accessible. Growing investor knowledge, good market returns and its suitability for diversification, which minimizes risk, also contributes to its popularity. A value chain that adds value to the investor has developed around the collective investment scheme. The role players in this chain include the investment manager, the management company and financial intermediaries. The growth in this part of the collective investment industry has been so dynamic that regulation and the introduction of various new intermediary layers are constantly affecting the value chain and the value added for the investor. Research was conducted to assess the impact of the value chain on the behaviour of the individual investor and the effect this has on wealth creation. The literary review established that the environment surrounding this dynamic and interdependent value chain is well-regulated and that costs and investor behaviour could have a significant impact on investment returns. The empirical study revealed that the average individual investor recognizes the impact of the value chain on his investment, but perceives himself as being knowledgeable enough to avert ineffectiveness in the chain by ensuring desired investment returns through good investment decisions. Over-diversification and irresponsible switching between funds by the investor can, however, destroy value and negate the effect of long-term returns. / Business Management / M. Com. (Business Management)

Collective investments have become a very popular investment vehicle in South Africa because it is, among other things, transparent, liquid and easily accessible. Growing investor knowledge, good market returns and its suitability for diversification, which minimizes risk, also contributes to its popularity. A value chain that adds value to the investor has developed around the collective investment scheme. The role players in this chain include the investment manager, the management company and financial intermediaries. The growth in this part of the collective investment industry has been so dynamic that regulation and the introduction of various new intermediary layers are constantly affecting the value chain and the value added for the investor. Research was conducted to assess the impact of the value chain on the behaviour of the individual investor and the effect this has on wealth creation. The literary review established that the environment surrounding this dynamic and interdependent value chain is well-regulated and that costs and investor behaviour could have a significant impact on investment returns. The empirical study revealed that the average individual investor recognizes the impact of the value chain on his investment, but perceives himself as being knowledgeable enough to avert ineffectiveness in the chain by ensuring desired investment returns through good investment decisions. Over-diversification and irresponsible switching between funds by the investor can, however, destroy value and negate the effect of long-term returns. / Business Management / M. Com. (Business Management)

In March 2018 the European Commission published the Action Plan on Financing Sustainable Growth. One of the main objectives with the actions presented in the action plan is to reorient capital flows towards sustainable investments, i.e. to influence more investors to invest sustainably. The action plan was followed by three proposals for transparency regulation regarding an EU taxonomy on sustainability, sustainability benchmarks and sustainability disclosures. Furthermore, the action plan included actions regarding two other transparency measures – sustainability labels and sustainability ratings. The first purpose of the thesis is to investigate if transparency regulation in the EU can be used as a tool to influence investors to choose sustainable investment funds. One of the main aims of the actions presented in the Action Plan on Financing Sustainable Growth, as well as the accompanying regulation proposals, is to reorient capital flows towards sustainable investments, i.e. to influence more investors to invest sustainably. In light of this, the Commission’s three proposed transparency regulations, as well as the concept of sustainability labels and ratings, are used as a basis for the investigation. The second purpose of the thesis is therefore to critically review the three regulation proposals and the concept of sustainability labels and ratings in order to gain an understanding of how different transparency measures can influence investors to choose sustainable investment funds. The transparency regulations and measures are analysed and critically reviewed in light of their objective to influence more investors to invest sustainably. A behavioural economics perspective, as well as consumer behaviour theories and decision-making models, are applied in order to analyse the transparency regulations and measures from an external perspective. Based on the analysis there are many indicators that transparency regulation can be used as a tool to influence investors to choose sustainable investment funds. However, to what extent transparency regulation can influence investor behaviour varies depending on which transparency measures are used and how they are designed. Sustainability benchmarks seem to have the least potential to influence investor behaviour, while the EU taxonomy on sustainability and sustainability labels seem to have the best potential to influence investor behaviour.