Kriegsmigration: Soziales

Kriegsmigration: Forced Displacement in History: Some Recent Research von Sascha O. Becker vom Februar 2022: “Forced displacement as a consequence of wars, civil conflicts, or natural disasters does not only have contemporaneous consequences but also long-run repercussions. This eclectic overview summarizes some recent research on forced displacement in economic history. While many of the episodes covered refer to Europe, this survey points to literature across all continents. It highlights new developments, and points to gaps in the literature” (abstract).

Führereinfluss: Can Leaders Persuade? Examining Movement in Immigration Beliefs von Hassan Afrouzi, Carolina Arteaga und Emily Weisburst vom 25. Februar 2022 (#18): “…. political messages cause participants to change their views. We deliberately test messages that do not contain facts and are instead composed of emotion-based arguments and policy proposals. Ex ante, it is not obvious that such messages will change beliefs, given that they contain no new substantive information about immigration. Both Republicans and Democrats are swayed by the pro-immigrant and anti-immigrant messages in this study, with effects that are stronger for messages that oppose party priors. … We find that a leader is most persuasive when expressing statements that are unexpected to an audience of individuals who find the leader to be credible” (S. 28/29).

Steuerfluchtmilliarden: Tax Avoidance through Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions von Jean-Marie Meier und Jake Smith vom 22. Februar 2022 (#443): “From 1990-2017, firms spent $4.1 trillion on 13,307 cross-border, tax-haven M&A, generating $31.6 billion in annual tax savings. Using a gravity model research design, we classify 57.2%, or $2.4 trillion of this deal value as abnormal, or beyond what is predicted based on the economic fundamentals of these havens. … more significant tax savings that can be achieved through the acquisition of real assets in havens, as opposed to the smaller tax savings that can be realized through the opening of shell companies in havens” (S. 38).

Deutsche Ungleichheit: Inequality and Income Dynamics in Germany von Moritz Drechsel-Grau, Andreas Peichl, Johannes Schmieder, Kai D. Schmid, Hannes Walz und Stefanie Wolter vom 3. März 2022 (#40): “By combining two high quality administrative data sources – personal income tax and social security records – this is the first paper to offer a complete picture of the German income distribution ranging from the very bottom to the very top. …. We find that earnings inequality among men has been increasing over the entire sample period from 2001 to 2016 … For women … bottom inequality has been falling due to strong earnings growth at the bottom, top inequality has been rising. … women’s earnings have been catching up with male earnings throughout most of the distribution. This happened even though the share of women working full-time has been declining. … Between 2001 and 2016, average incomes of workers grew by around 5% while average incomes of entrepreneurs increased by around 25%. Hence, total income inequality is higher and increased more strongly than labor income inequality. … we document large gaps between men and women at the very top of the total income distribution driven by women being less likely to have high business incomes” (S. 36).

Managerbiases: Presidential Address: Corporate Finance and Reality von John R. Graham vom 9. März 2022 (#630): “… common elements of real-world corporate finance indicate that companies make decisions based on internal forecasts that are miscalibrated and thought to be reliable only two years ahead; use decision rules that are conservative, sticky, simple, and that attempt to market time; and, emphasize corporate objectives that increasingly focus on stakeholders and revenues“ (abstract).

Finanzjournalismusbias: Meet the Press: Survey Evidence on Financial Journalists as Information Intermediaries von Andrew C. Call, Scott A. Emett, Eldar Maksymov und Nathan Y. Sharp vom 16. November 2021 (#2118): “… financial journalists say they are more likely to cover provocative subjects, such as controversial companies or CEOs with colorful personalities. We also find consistent evidence that financial journalists frequently interact with company management and financial analysts when developing articles. … Financial journalists also believe monitoring companies to hold them accountable is one of financial journalism’s most important objectives, but often face negative consequences when writing articles that portray companies in an unfavorable light” (S. 32).

Schweizerwasser: Facing climate change: Does Switzerland have enough water? Von Juan Esteban Martínez-Jaramillo, Ann van Ackere und Erik Larsen vom 21. Januar 2021 (#11): “As the most used renewable technologies (i.e., wind, solar and hydro) have an unpredictable output, managing this variability is challenging. This paper uses a system dynamics approach to understand what type of regulation is required to successfully manage the simultaneous increase in demand and reduction in water resources in the Swiss electricity system, which is gradually replacing nuclear by solar generation. … Our findings indicate that, without government intervention, shortages occur and prices are higher. Subsidizing PV eliminates blackouts, decreases the electricity price and indirectly encourages Pumped Hydro-Storage investments” (abstract).

Kriegsmigration: Nachhaltige Investments

Russlandfinanzierung: Russlands fossile Macht und Deutschlands Finanzindustrie von urgewald vom 9. März 2022: „Zwar betonen insbesondere Deutsche Bank sowie Commerzbank, dass sie ihr Engagement in Russland in den letzten Jahren, speziell seit der Krim-Annexion, zurückgefahren haben. Dennoch kommt die Deutsche Bank in einer Analyse von Profundo basierend auf urgewald-Daten [1] auf Platz 4 der europäischen Banken, die in den letzten fünf Jahren die vier führenden russischen Ölund Gasfirmen Gazprom, Lukoil, Rosneft und Novatek durch Konsortialkredite und Underwriting unterstützt haben. Die DZ Bank kommt auf Platz 11, die Helaba auf Platz 13, die Commerzbank auf Platz 15 und die BayernLB kommt auf Platz 17 der europäischen Banken mit dem größten Exposure zum russischen Öl- und Gas-Sektor“. Mein Kommentar: Ich habe Aktien aus Russland und China und andere kritische Länder seit vielen Jahren aus meinen Portfolios ausgeschlossen.

IMF for Clima: Climate Action to Unlock the Inclusive Growth Story of the 21st Century von Amar Bhattacharya, Maksym Ivanyna, William Oman und Nicholas Stern von Internationalen Währungsfonds vom 4. Februar 2022 (#50):  “A just transition to a low-carbon economy is the only viable way forward. … The key policies to enable the transition are: public spending on and investment frameworks for sustainable infrastructure, pricing carbon, regulations, promoting sustainable use of natural resources, scaling up and aligning finance with climate objectives, low-carbon industrial and innovation policies, building resilience and adaptation, better measurement of well-being and sustainability, and providing information and education on climate risks. Implemented well, climate action would unlock the inclusive growth story of the 21st century … ” (abstract).

IMF ESG Kritik: Limits to Private Climate Change Mitigation von Dalya Elmalt, Deniz Igan und Divya Kirti vom Internationalen Währungsfonds vom 15. Februar 2022 (#28): “… we explore the link between emissions growth and ESG scores using firm-level data for the largest emitters around the world. Discouragingly, our analysis uncovers at best a weak relationship: firms with better ESG scores do display somewhat slower emissions growth but this link is substantially attenuated and no longer statistically significant if we limit attention to within-country or within-firm variation. Our findings suggest limited scope for sustainable investing strategies conditioned solely on ESG indicators to meaningfully help mitigate climate change … “ (abstract). Mein Kommentar: Vielleicht wären die Ergebnisse anders ausgefallen, wenn Best-in-Universe (BiU) statt Best-in-Class (BiC) ESG Ratings genutzt worden wären. BiC und BiU wird in dem Bericht nicht thematisiert, vgl. Nachhaltige Portfolios: Warum Best-in-Class schlecht sein kann, aber Best-in-Universe selten genutzt wird (wertpapiertreuhand.de)

Insti-Greenwashing? Institutional Investors and ESG Preferences von Florencio Lopez de Silanes, Joseph A. McCahery und Paul C. Pudschedl vom 7. März 2022 (#85): “… institutional investors have a strong preference for investing in firms with strong ESG rankings relative to other financial metrics and proxies for financial performance. … high quality ESG companies receive too much attention from institutional investors and are in danger of being overvalued. … institutional investors have a preference for ESG disclosure over actual ESG quality of portfolio companies. … We also find no evidence of a relationship between the holdings of large shareholders and carbon emissions. … ownership stake size is negatively correlated with high quality ESG” (S. 27).

Votingwashing: Active ownership as a tool of greenwashing von Gianfranco Gianfrate vom 8. März 2022 in EDHEC Research Spring 2022: “We study to what extent institutional investors’ ownership affected corporate carbon emissions in 68 countries for the period from 2007 to 2018 and find that institutional investment on average does not appear to lead to any tangible carbon footprint reduction” (S. 6).

ESG-Positiv: Walking the Talk – Valuing a Multi-Stakeholder Strategy von FCTL Global und der Wharton Uiversity vom 4. Februar 2022 (#61):  “we found firms that paired strong stakeholder language (“the talk”) with strong performance on material ESG measures (“the walk”): Generated 4% higher returns over a three-year period as measured by return on invested capital (ROIC); Were more likely to meaningfully invest in research and development (R&D), investing twice as much in R&D as a percentage of sales; Were 50% more likely to issue long-term guidance; Delivered higher sales growth over longer periods of time (1.5% higher over three years); and delivered more stable returns, resulting in 9% lower predicted ROIC volatility over three years” (S. 5).

ESG Anleihe-Alpha? Sustainable Alpha in Sovereign and Corporate Bonds von Karishma Kaul, Katharina Schwaiger, Muling Si und Andrew Ang von Blackrock vom 3. Februar 2022 (#144): “We show that ESG ratings, carbon emission intensity, and measures of forward-looking corporate commitments on carbon emissions have predictive power for fixed income excess returns. While some of these signals were originally formulated in equities and have previously been documented to predict equity returns, an important contribution is to show that they also have predictability in fixed income returns” (S. 16/17).

Traditionelle Investments

Staatsfondsänderungen: SWF 3.0: How Sovereign Wealth Funds navigated Covid-19 and changed forever von Diego López vom 7. Februar 2022 (#34) “Since March 2020, governments around the world have withdrawn over US$ 211 billion from their books and have invited them to bailout different sectors and businesses … but …most have grown their assets under management tremendously due to the stock market rally that has followed the market and oil bust of the beginning of 2020. … One can argue that SWFs have indeed entered a new phase “SWF 3.0” characterized by increasing size, influence, maturity, and sophistication, by an interest in different asset classes, regions, and industries, and by a focus on sustainability, collaboration, and long-term survival” (abstract).

Finanzprofessorenleverage: The Purpose of a Finance Professor von Axel Edmans vom 24. Januar 2021 (#1981): “The academic finance profession has the potential to be uniquely purposeful due to four characteristics – the freedom to take risks and work on what we’re passionate about, the loyalty to our profession rather than just our institution, the collaborative nature of the creation and dissemination of knowledge, and the magnitude of our potential impact. However, what the profession currently values, and its current social norms, are significant barriers to the fulfilment of this potential. This article highlights the special features of our profession that we often take for granted and ignore, and proposes ideas to make it not only more impactful and relevant, but also more collegial and fun” (abstract).  Mein Favorit: ”View dissemination of research to be an integral part of the purpose of a professor, through teaching or engagement with practitioners, media, or policymakers” (S. 47).

Gedächtnis vergessen? Memory of Past Experiences and Economic Decisions von Ulrike Malmendier und Jessica A. Wachter vom 28. Januar 2022 (#94): “In traditional economic models, memories of past experiences affect choices only to the extent that they represent information. … We .. document the empirical evidence on long-lasting experience effects in finance and economics. … Our treatment suggests a role for models of memory in accounting not only for micro-level phenomena, but for anomalies within asset pricing and macroeconomics more broadly”.

Value-Fondsmanager Bias: To Sell or Not to Sell? Disposition Effect and Investment Styles von Can Yilanci vom 9. März 2022 (#79): “We find a strong disposition effect for value funds, but we find no disposition effect for growth funds. … We show that value fund managers show a strong (weak) disposition effect when undervaluation is likely to be small (large). … we show that the disposition effect hurts performance. Funds that show a disposition effect keep stocks with low-risk adjusted future returns and sell stocks with high risk-adjusted future returns” (abstract).

Schwache deutsche Frauen? The Gender Gap in Household Bargaining Power: A Portfolio-Choice Approach von Ran Gu, Cameron Peng und Weilong Zhang vom 5. Januar 2022 (#85): “When members of the same household have different risk preferences, whose preference matters and why? We propose an intrahousehold model that aggregates individual preferences at the household level, allowing us to back out the distribution and determinants of bargaining power from household portfolio choice. … in the average Australian (German) household, the relative importance of the husband’s risk preference is 44% (114%) higher than the wife’s. While the gap is partially explained by gender differences in individual characteristics such as income and employment, it is also due to gender effects” (abstract).

Gleichgewichtung: Concentration within Sectors and Its Implications for Equal Weighting von Anu R. Ganti und Craig J. Lazzara von S&P Dow Jones Indices vom Februar 2022: “Sector concentration has significant implications for index weighting decisions. Since Information Technology and Consumer Discretionary adjusted HHIs are at historically high levels, equal weighting could be a logical option as concentration has tended to mean-revert historically. In contrast, Energy, Industrials, and Materials adjusted HHIs are at historically low levels. Assuming that the recent low concentration levels will move upwards, cap weighting could make sense” (S. 10). Mein Kommentar: Meine Gleichgewichtung von Aktien hat sich gut bewährt, vgl. Soehnholz ESG 2021: Passive Allokationsportfolios und Deutsche ESG Aktien besonders gut – Verantwortungsvolle (ESG) Geldanlage (prof-soehnholz.com)

Private Equity Unsicherheit: Asset Allocation with Private Equity von Arthur Korteweg und Mark M. Westerfield vom 30. Januar 2022 (#162): “We survey the literature on the private equity partnership arrangement from the perspective of an outside investor (limited partner). We examine how the partnership arrangement fits into a broader portfolio of investments, and we consider the methods and difficulties in performance measurement, both at the fund level and at the asset class level. We follow with a discussion of performance persistence and the skill and pricing power of both general and limited partners. We continue by examining the limited partner’s problem of managing commitments and investments over time while diversifying across funds in light of both idiosyncratic and systematic shocks. We close with a summary of recent work on optimal portfolio allocation to private equity. Throughout, we consider how empirical work and theory match the particular institutional details of private equity, and we identify 27 open questions to help guide private equity research forward” (abstract).