We investigate how tax loss offset restrictions affect an investor's evaluation of risky investments under bounded rationality. We analytically identify behavioral tax effects for different levels of loss offset restrictions, tax rate and prospect theoretical biases (loss aversion, probability weighting and reference dependence) and find tax loss offset restrictions significantly bias investor perception, even more heavily than the tax rate. If loss offset restrictions are rather generous, investors are very loss averse or assign a huge weight to loss probabilities, taxation is likely to increase the preference value of risky investments (behavioral tax paradox). Surprisingly, the identified significant perception biases of tax loss offset restrictions occur under both high and low tax rates and thus are relatively insensitive to tax rate changes. Finally, we identify huge differences in behavioral tax effects across countries indicating that tax loss offset restrictions crucially determine the perceived tax quality of a country for risky investments. Our analysis is relevant for policy makers discussing future tax reforms as well as for investors assessing risky investment opportunities. / Series: WU International Taxation Research Paper Series

Reward prediction errors are quantitative signed terms that express the difference between the value of an obtained outcome and the expected value that was placed on it prior to its receipt. Positive reward prediction errors constitute reward, negative reward prediction errors constitute punishment. Reward prediction errors have been shown to be powerful drivers of reinforcement learning in formal models and there is thus a strong reason to believe they are used in the brain. Isolating such neural signals stands to help elucidate how reinforcement learning is implemented in the brain, and may ultimately shed light on individual differences, psychopathologies of reward such as addiction and depression, and the apparently non-normative behaviour under risk described by behavioural economics. In the present thesis, I used the event related potential technique to isolate and study electrophysiological components whose behaviour resembled reward prediction errors. I demonstrated that a candidate component, “feedback related negativity”, occurring 250 to 350 ms after receipt of reward or punishment, showed such behaviour. A meta-analysis of the existing literature on this component, using a novel technique of “great grand averaging”, supported this view. The component showed marked asymmetries however, being more responsive to reward than punishment and more responsive to appetitive rather than aversive outcomes. I also used novel data-driven techniques to examine activity outside the temporal interval associated with the feedback related negativity. This revealed a later component responding solely to punishments incurred in a Pavlovian learning task. It also revealed numerous salience-encoding components which were sensitive to a prediction error’s size but not its sign.

The dissertation called Economic and Psychological Aspects of a Consumer's Behaviour and Decision-Making is dedicated to a consumer's behaviour and decision-making in economic and financial issues from the perspective of classic economy, psychology and behavioural economy. The theoretical part describes the expected utility theory and psychological findings on one hand, and presents the so called Prospect Theory and systematic biases on the other hand. The practical part comprises a research. Mission of the questionnaire survey is to find out whether behaviour and decision-making are rational and correspond with the classic economy theory or whether consumers behave irrationally and verify presumptions of behavioural economy.

The topic of work "Investor's psychology on Foreign Exchange market" is to explain basic assumption for business on the Foreign Exchange markets and also methods how to profit on them. Work focus on soft factors, which are important in investor's decisions making process. These factors are typical for human's decisions, which are not always optimal from statistical and logical side, and may cause mistakes and investor's lost. The most important economic theories of client's behavior are used for conclusions. The major part of work foces on client as individual, describes his motivation, expectation, trade joining and risk adaptation. Theoretical data are participants of the research, which is based in two decision's making games. Conclutions are created from results of games and their comparison.

Insurance has been considered as a useful tool for farmers to mitigate income volatility. However, there remain concerns that insurance may distort crop production decisions. Positive mathematical programming (PMP) models of farmers’ cropping decisions can be applied to study the effect of agricultural business risk management (BRM) policies on farmers’ decisions on land use and their incomes. Before being used to examine agricultural producer responses to policy changes under the expected utility framework, the models must first be calibrated to obtain the values of the risk aversion coefficient and the cost function parameters. In chapter 2, three calibration approaches are compared for disentangling the risk parameter from the parameters of the cost function. Then, in chapter 3, to investigate the impacts on production incentives of changes in Canada’s AgriStability program, farm management models are calibrated for farms with different cost structures for three different Alberta regions. Results indicate that farmers’ observed attitudes towards risk vary with cost structure. After joining the program, all farmers alter their land allocations to some extent. The introduction of a reference margin limit (RML) in the AgriStability program under Growing Forward 2 (2013-2018), which was retained in the replacement legislation until 2020, has the most negative impact on farmers with the lowest costs. The removal of RML significantly increases the benefits to low-cost farmers. Traditional insurance products provide financial support to farmers. However, for fruit farmers, the products’ quality can be greatly affected by the weather conditions during the stage of fruit development and ripening, which may lead to quality downgrade and a significant loss in revenue with little impacts on yields. Hence, chapters 4 and 5 investigate the conceptual feasibility of using weather-indexed insurance (WII) to hedge against non-catastrophic, but quality-impacting weather conditions to complement existing traditional insurance. Prospect theory is applied to analyze a farmer’s demand for WII. The theoretical model demonstrates that an increase in the volatility of total revenue and the revenue proportion from blueberries increases the possibility of farmers’ participation in WII. On the other hand, the increase in the value loss aversion coefficient and WII’s basis risk leads to less demand for WII. To design a WII product for blueberry growers to hedge against quality risk, a quality index must be constructed and the relationship between key weather conditions, such as cumulative maximum temperature and cumulative excess rainfall, and the quality index should be quantified. The results from a partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) show that the above goals are achievable. Further, rainfall and temperature can be modelled via a time-series model and statistical distributions, respectively, to provide reasonable estimates for calculating insurance premia. / Graduate / 2022-08-05

Cette thèse a pour objectif d’évaluer et de comparer la performance des stratégies d’assurance de portefeuille pour tenter de définir quelles stratégies doivent être privilégiées par les investisseurs. Nous comparons de nombreuses stratégies d’assurance (OBPI, CPPI, put synthétique et Stop-loss) entre elles mais également avec quelques autres stratégies de référence. Nous utilisons différents critères de comparaison qui comprennent: 1. Les distributions de pay-off, le niveau de protection, la dominance stochastique et le coût d’assurance dans différentes conditions de marché identifiées par des modèles à changements de régime markovien. 2. Les mesures de la performance ajustée au risque qui peuvent refléter les préférences des investisseurs vis-à-vis du risque et de la rentabilité. 3. Les préférences des investisseurs en intégrant la théorie cumulative des perspectives (TCP). Nos résultats semblent mettre en évidence une dominance des stratégies CPPI dans la majorité des cas et pour la majorité des critères de comparaison. / This thesis is set out with the objective of evaluating and comparing the performance of portfolio insurance strategies. We try to figure out when and why one portfolio insurance strategy should be preferred by investors in practice. To meet this objective, main portfolio insurance strategies (OBPI, CPPI, Synthetic put and Stop-loss) are compared relatively to each other and to some benchmark strategies. Portfolio insurance strategies are applied within different implementation scenarios and compared according to various criteria that include:1. The payoff functions, stochastic dominance, the level of protection and the cost of insurance under bull and bear market conditions. 2. Various risk adjusted performance measures that reflect different investors’ preferences toward risk and return. 3. The preferences of investors who act according to cumulative prospect theory (CPT). Our results reveal a dominant role of CPPI strategy at the majority of cases and according to the majority of comparison criteria.

Bakgrund: Informationssäkerhet är någonting som företag inom alla branscher bör ägna sig åt eftersom samtliga organisationer är utsatta för informationsrisker. Avsikten med informationssäkerhet är att skydda information så att den finns tillgänglig vid behov, är tillförlitlig och för att säkerställa att endast behöriga har åtkomst (Informationssäkerhet, 2015). Bristande informationshantering kan exempelvis resultera i dataförluster och läckt kunddata vilket i sin tur kan leda till försämrat kundförtroende och stora intäktsförluster. Företags utsatthet för informationsrisker påverkas både av interna och externa faktorer. Utbrottet av Covid-19 är ett exempel på en extern faktor (Humla, 2020). Enligt en rapport är svensk tillverkningsindustris hantering av informationsrisker kraftigt eftersatt i förhållande till övriga sektorers hantering av informationsrisker (Radar Ecosystems Specialists, 2017). Syfte: Denna uppsats undersöker hur ett företag inom svensk tillverkningsindustri arbetar med informationssäkerhet (eng. information security risk management, ISRM). Vidare applicerar vi en teoretisk lins i form av prospektteorin för att förklara informationssäkerhetsarbetet. Vi undersöker även om beslutfattare inom IT-säkerhet uppvisar tendens till övermod och huruvida detta kan påverka företagets arbete med informationssäkerhet. Metod: Uppsatsen är en kvalitativ fallstudie och det empiriska materialet har inhämtats genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med beslutfattare och utvecklare som arbetar medinformationssäkerhet. Fallföretaget är ett anonymiserat svenskt tillverkningsföretag som tillhandahåller produkter och tjänster inom säkerhetsbranschen. Resultat: Enligt vår studie utgår beslutfattare från tidigare erfarenheter av informationssäkerhet när hanteringsstrategier utformas. Det framkommer även att beslutfattarens resonemang och riskhantering förändras i takt med personens erfarenhet. Vi kan även konstatera att beslutfattarens agerande kan förklaras utifrån prospektteorin och att hanteringen påverkas av kognitiva aspekter såsom övermod. / Background: Every organization needs to manage its information security risks (ISRM) as all industries are exposed to information risks. The purpose of ISRM is to protect information so that it is accessible when needed, reliable and to ensure only authorized access (Informationssäkerhet, 2015). Lack of ISRM may result in data loss or personal data leaks, which in turn may lead to a decrease of consumer confidence and reduced revenue streams. Enterprises exposure to information risks are affected by both internal and external factors. The outbreak of Covid-19 is an example of an external factor (Humla, 2020). According to a report, the Swedish manufacturing industry's management of information risks is severely neglected in relation to other sectors ́ handling of information risks (Radar Ecosystems Specialists, 2017). Purpose: This thesis explores how a Swedish manufacturing company manages its information security risks. This is explored by applying a theoretical framework of Prospect Theory to explain decision makers ́ reasoning behind its current ISRM practices. We are also exploring whether decision makers within IT-security have a tendency towards Overconfidence bias and whether it may affect the company's ISRM. Method: The thesis is a qualitative case study and the empirical data has been obtained through semi structured interviews with decision-makers and developers working with information security. The case company is an anonymous Swedish manufacturing company that provides products and services in the security industry. Results: According to our thesis, decision makers rely on previous information security experiences when designing management strategies. It also appears that the decision maker's reasoning and risk management change as the person's experience. We can also note that the decision maker's behavior can be explained on the basis of Prospect Theory and that the ISRM is influenced by cognitive aspects such as overconfidence.

This thesis analyzes and evaluates the relationship between insider trading and the long-term stock performance of Initial Public Offerings (IPO) in Sweden. The study looks at firms that recently conducted an IPO and how the stock performance of the firm is impacted by insiders making transactions in their own stock. An IPO is known to generate high returns on its first day on the public stock market, but to underperform the market in the long term. The characteristics of an IPO are deviant from the rest of the stock market, and with less information available to the public compared to other firms, the IPO market is hard to navigate for investors. Transactions made by insiders in the share of their own company is usually seen as guidance in public companies. An insider purchase is usually followed by a positive stock return, and insiders selling shares have the opposite impact. The aim of this thesis is to investigate if the information provided by insider transactions can be used to create a potential trading strategy for IPOs. Through statistical analysis, a negative relationship is found between the insider trading and IPO long-term stock performance, indicating that insider buying shares are connected to lesser stock performance. This contradicts previous research regarding insider trading in seasoned firms and opens up for discussion. By implementing a theoretical framework, a deeper analysis of the proposed relationship is be made. This study concludes that the negative relationship between insider trading and long-term IPO stock performance is not directly caused by insider trading itself. Instead, it is a result of insiders making poor investment decisions due to outside pressure and behavioral factors.

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[pt] Baseado na Teoria Cumulativa da Perspectiva, três ensaios são apresentados nessa tese. Todos os três trabalhos estão conectados pelo entendimento aprofundado da Função de Ponderação de Probabilidade e suas conexões cenários de decisão sob risco. O primeiro ensaio é um trabalho empírico utilizando a teoria da perspectiva para analisar o viés do efeito de enquadramento em decisões de investimentos em certos países emergentes: Brasil, China, Russia, México e África do Sul. Em todos os casos, identificamos empiricamente o poder preditivo da teoria da perspectiva para os retornos dos ativos. Também encontramos que a função de ponderação de probabilidade é o fator mais importante para o poder preditivo. O segundo ensaio é um trbalho teórico propondo uma axiomatização da função de ponderação de Goldstein-Einhorn. Desde 1987, a conhecida função de ponderação de Goldstein-Einhorn é largamente utilizada em trabalhos em muitos artigos empíricos e teóricos. Richard Gonzalez e GeorgeWu propuseram uma axiomatização para esta função em 1999. O trabalho que apresentamos analisa a condição de preferência dos autores e encontra uma família maior de funções de ponderação. Fornecemos exemplos úteis e sugerimos uma nova condição de preferência que é necessária e suficiente para a função de Goldstein- Einhorn. Esta nova condição de prefer6encia simula o comportamento das pessoas em situações que envolvem atitutes arriscadas. O terceiro ensaio propõe uma medida para as características psicológicas chamadas de atratividade e discriminabilidade, no contexto das funções de ponderação de probabilidades. Esse conceitos são importantes para nos ajudar a entender como algumas emoções influenciam nosso comportamento. Propomos medidas no sentido absoluto e relativo e as comparamos com alguns exemplos particulares encontrados na literatura. Nossos resultados são consistentes com o entendimento qualitativo encontrado na literatura e fornece um entendimento quantitativo para ele. / [en] Based on Cumulative Prospect Theory, three essays are presented in this thesis. All three works are linked by a deeper understanding of Probability Weighting Functions and its connection with decisions in a risk scenario. The first essay is an empirical work using prospect theory to analyze the narrow framing bias in investment decisions in certain emerging countries: Brazil, China, Russia, Mexico and South Africa. In all cases, we empirically identified the predictive power of prospect theory for stock returns. We also found that the probability weighting function is the most important factor in this predictive power. The second essay is a theoretical work proposing an axiomatization for the Goldstein-Einhorn weighting function. Since 1987, the well known Goldstein- Einhorn Weighting Function is widely used in many empirical and theoretical papers. Richard Gonzalez and George Wu proposed an axiomatization for it in 1999. The present work analyses their preference condition and finds a bigger family of weighting functions. We provide useful examples and suggest a new preference condition which is necessary and sufficient for Goldstein-Einhorn function. This new preference condition simulates the behavior of people in risky attitudes. The third essay propose a measure to evaluate the psychological features of attractiveness and discriminability in the context of probability weighting functions. These concepts are important to help us understand how some emotions drive our behavior. We propose measures in absolute and in the relative sense and compare with some particular cases found in the literature. Our findings are consistent with the qualitative understanding widespread in the literature and provide a quantitative analysis for it.