ESG Kritik

Viel ESG Kritik und mehr neues Research

Klimaumfeld

Klimawandelleugner: Climate Change Report IPCC 2021 – a Chimera of Science and Politics von Igor Mandel, und Stan Lipovetsky vom 30. September 2021 (#70): “The recent IPCC report on Climate Change calls for immediate actions from governments, requiring tremendous efforts and expenses worldwide. However, the science behind this report is far from clear. It reinforces the false sense of scientific “consensus”, while in fact does not answer the most fundamental questions, many of which have been raised long time ago. We reformulate those questions for the authors of the Report and add some other ones with a hope that they will be unequivocally and publicly answered. The stakes are too high to ignore obvious logical and factual faults of the Report. Statistical analysis with several techniques is also performed; it shows no evident support to the hypothesis of the anthropogenic impact to the temperature change“ (abstract).

Noch mehr Klimarisiko? Interacting tipping elements increase risk of climate domino effects under global warming von Nico Wunderling, Jonathan F. Donges, Jürgen Kurths und Ricarda Winkelmann vom 3. Juni 2021: “Over the past decades, significant changes have been observed for the polar ice sheets as well as for the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and the Amazon rainforest (Lenton et al., 2019). Should these climate tipping elements eventually cross their respective critical temperature thresholds, this may affect the stability of the entire climate system (Steffen et al., 2018). In this study, we show that this risk increases significantly when considering interactions between these climate tipping elements and that these interactions tend to have an overall destabilising effect. Altogether, with the exception of the Greenland Ice Sheet, interactions effectively push the critical threshold temperatures to lower warming levels, thereby reducing the overall stability of the climate system. The domino-like interactions also foster cascading, non-linear responses” (S. 9).

Produktives Energiesparen: Labour productivity improvements from energy efficiency investments: The experience of European firms von Fotios Kalantzis und Hanna Niczyporuk vom 12. Juli 2021 (#6): “… despite being financially viable, many energy efficiency investment opportunities do not materialise. … novel data from a firm-level survey conducted by the European Investment Bank that covers more than 15,000 firms in 27 European Union member states and the UK during 2018-2019 … The results show a positive and causal relationship between energy efficiency investment and labour productivity. The findings of the paper suggest that firms can benefit much more from the energy efficiency investment than what is often assumed, and highlight a need for government policies that would increase firms’ awareness of the non-energy benefits” (abstract).

Positiver Klimawandel? A Current Examination of the German Energy Industry, Fossil Fuel Use, and Climate Change von Stefan Linnhoff, Todd Broker, David Durr und L. Murphy Smith vom 25. August 2021 (#10): “This paper offers a current overview of major energy firms in Germany, including location, geographic operations, and financial performance. … Extensive research indicates that climate change will not have significant negative consequences and could even have beneficial consequences. … One thing not debatable is that reducing use of fossil fuels has increased the cost of energy and has thereby negatively affected economic progress. That the speculative benefit of reducing use of fossil fuel is more than the cost to society is unlikely” (abstract).

CO2-Steuer reicht nicht: Mitigating Climate Change: Growth-Friendly Policies to Achieve Net Zero Emissions by 2050 von Florence Jaumotte, Weifeng Liu und Warwick J. McKibbin vom 13. Sepember 2021 (#6): “It is shown that a policy of only using a carbon tax to reach the target, has significant economic costs in the short run and these continue by 2050. Whereas a well-designed policy that has a mix of policies aimed at both achieving net zero emissions by 2050 and providing fiscal stimulus through infrastructure investment to support the net-zero target at the early stages of the global economic recovery from the pandemic can have short term economic benefits with substantially reduced economic impacts by 2050. Carbon pricing is shown to be an important driver of the scale of emissions reductions while a substantial green infrastructure program is important to support the emission reductions but also to minimize the economic costs of the structural changes required in the global economy over the next 30 years. The impacts of the policies differ significantly across countries” (S. 40).

Asphalt pro Klima? Assessing Multiple Inequalities and Air Pollution Abatement Policies von Jorge A. Bonilla, Claudia Aravena und Ricardo Morales-Betancourt vom 19. August 2021 (#25): “This study investigates the magnitude of air-quality inequality in conjunction with economic and social inequalities in Bogota (Colombia). … Results show that allocation of air-quality across Bogota is highly unequal, exceeding economic or social inequality. Evidence indicates economic, social and air quality disparities intersect displaying southwest as the most vulnerable zone. Paving roads is the most progressive and cost-effective policy, reducing overall inequality between 19-84% with net benefits exceeding US$479 million. Our analysis also suggests that benefits of renewing diesel heavy- and light-duty vehicles do not compensate the costs” (abstract).

McKinsey-Apell: Net-Zero Deutschland Chancen und Herausforderungen auf dem Weg zur Klimaneutralität bis 2045 von McKinsey vom 10. September 2021: „Wenn wir den optimalen Pfad beschreiten, können Einsparungen im Gesamtzeitraum bis 2045 die Kosten der Dekarbonisierung ausgleichen. … Gelingt es Deutschland nicht, die Rahmenbedingungen für die Transformation rechtzeitig zu schaffen, können Marktanteile deutscher Unternehmen und damit Arbeitsplätze und Wohlstand verlorengehen. … Es muss gelingen, die bisherige Veränderungsgeschwindigkeit in den nächsten zehn Jahren gegenüber den letzten 30 Jahren zu verdreifachen – in manchen Sektoren sogar zu verzehnfachen – und das Gesamtsystem zu verändern“ (S. 8-10).

Klimachancen: Climate Change and Fiscal Sustainability: Risks and Opportunities von Matthew Agarwala, Matt Burke, Patrycja Klusak, Kamiar Mohaddes, Ulrich Volz und Dimitri Zenghelis vom 23. September 2021 (#62): “… markets still lack credible estimates of how climate change will affect debt sustainability, sovereign creditworthiness, and the public finances of major economies. … Meeting internationally agreed climate targets will require an unprecedented structural transformation of the global economy over the next two or three decades. The changing landscape of risks warrants new risk management and hedging strategies to contain climate risk and minimise the impact of asset stranding and asset devaluation. Yet, conditional on action being taken early, the opportunities from managing a net zero transition would substantially outweigh the costs” (abstract).

Klima-Angst: Young people’s voices on climate anxiety, government betrayal and moral injury: a global phenomenon von Caroline Hickman, Elizabeth Marks, Panu Pihkala, Susan Clayton, R. Eric Lewandowski, Elouise E . Mayall, Britt Wray, Catriona Mellor und Lise van Susteren vom 7. September 2021 (#7999): “This is the largest and most international survey of climate anxiety in young people to date . It shows that the psychological (emotional, cognitive, social, and functional) burdens of climate change are profoundly affecting huge numbers of young people around the world. Furthermore, it is the first study to offer insight into how young people’s perception of governments’ responses to climate change is associated with their own emotional and psychological reactions. These reactions are reported by young people from a diverse set of countries with a range of incomes and differing levels of direct exposure to severe effects of climate change (S. 2).

Sozial- und Governanceumfeld

Kinderernährungskrise: Fed to Fail? The Crisis of Children’s Diets in Early Life. 2021 Child Nutrition Report von der UNICEF vom September 2021: “Children are not fed enough of the right foods at the right time. … Children’s diets have seen little or no improvement in the last decade. … Poor diets are not affecting children equally across and within regions. … Children’s diets are constrained by social, cultural and gender barriers” (S. 1, 2).

Gesundheitsinnovationen: Future of health 3 | Innovation boosted von Morris Hosseini,  Thilo Kaltenbach, Ulrich Kleipass, Karsten Neumann und Oliver Rong von Roland Berger vom 24. September 2021: “Innovation in today’s world has become so complex and multifaceted that players need to invest a great deal of effort in understanding what is going on and how it may affect the industry. Players of all types would be well advised to consider different scenarios in their planning and hone their ability to detect upcoming events and react to them in a versatile manner. Innovation and the convergence of the physical and digital mean that the world is less plannable and predictable than in the past. In tomorrow’s healthcare sector, players need to expect the unexpected” (S. 26). Mein Kommentar: Mein neuer Fonds hat einen sehr hohen Gesundheitsanteil, vgl. Nachhaltigster Aktienfonds? – Verantwortungsvolle (ESG) Geldanlage (prof-soehnholz.com)

Impfung oder Korruption? An Old Plug and a New Virus: Effect of Public Corruption on the Covid-19 Immunization Progress von Mohammad Reza Farzanegan und Hans Philipp Hofmann vom 27. September (#6): “Both re-scaled corruption indicators, control of corruption from the World Governance Indicators and the corruption perceptions index from Transparency International, showed a significant and robust negative effect on the share of people who have been partially or fully vaccinated, ceteris paribus. … Corruption has proven to be a significant driver of the cross-country COVID-19 vaccination progress” (S. 12).

AfD-Wirkung: The Impact of Natives’ Attitudes Towards Immigrants on Their Integration in the Host Country von Pia Schilling und Steven Stillman vom 27. September 2021 (#11): “This paper analyzes … the effect of local support for the right-wing AfD political party on the integration of refugees in Germany. … we show that refugees allocated to areas with higher support for the AfD have worse economic and social integration. This is especially true for groups targeted by AfD campaigns. Furthermore, AfD support is correlated with attacks against refugees and hinders positive contacts with the majority society. Germans in municipalities with strong right-wing support are also less likely to engage with refugees favorably by donating their time or money” (S. 20).

Unglaubwürdige Unternehmen? Selfish Corporations von Emanuellle Colonello, Niels Joachim Gormsen und Tim McQuade vom 27. September 2021 (#263): “… we provide some of the first evidence linking public perceptions of corporate behavior, as well as the messaging surrounding corporate responsibility, to the support for economic policies. … we show that the public demands corporations to behave better within society, a sentiment we label “big business discontent. …  We also find a strong baseline link between big business discontent and the support for economic policies, with people dissatisfied with large corporations’ behavior within society also opposing corporate bailouts… positive communications surrounding corporate behavior can actually lead to less support for corporation friendly policies than providing no communication if agents have sufficiently negative established beliefs regarding corporate responsibility” (S. 32/33).

Viel ESG Kritik: Nachhaltige Investments

Viel ESG Kritik: Anti-ESG Innovationen? The ESG-Innovation Disconnect: Evidence from Green Patenting von Lauren Cohen, Umit G. Gurun und Quoc Nguyen vom 25. Juni 2021 (#24): “…we find that oil, gas, and energy producing firms – firms with lower Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores, and who are often explicitly excluded from ESG funds’ investment universe – are key innovators in the United States’ green patent landscape. These energy producers produce more, and significantly higher quality, green innovation“ (abstract).

Oder ist ESG gut für Innovationen? Environment, Social, and Governance Performance and Enterprise Innovation Capacity: A Study of the Top 100 Global Hi-Tech firms von Marina Nazir, Minhas Akbar, Ahsan Akbar, Ammar Hussain und Muhammad Ullah  vom 2. August 2021 (#23): “We employ a sample of the top 100 hi-tech global companies for a period of 2010-2017. … The study findings assert that corporate ESG undertakings has a positively affect the innovation capacity of the global hi-tech firms” (abstract).

Viel ESG Kritik: The Secret Diary of a ‘Sustainable Investor’ von Tariq Fancy vom 20. August 2021: „… shares how my thinking evolved from evangelizing ‘sustainable investing’ for the world’s largest investment firm to decrying it as a dangerous placebo that harms the public interest. … I challenge business leaders who have advocated the ideas I question below to offer a serious rebuttal. We’re running out of time: we can no longer afford to answer inconvenient truths with convenient fantasies”. Mein Kommentar: Absolute und Relative Impact Investing und Additionalität – Verantwortungsvolle (ESG) Geldanlage (prof-soehnholz.com)

Viel ESG Kritik: Greenwashing? How Green are Green Debt Issuers? von Jochen M. Schmittmann und Chua Han Teng vom International Monetary fund vom 28. Juli 2021 (#54): “… We find evidence that green bond issuers have lower emission intensities than other firms, while green loan and sustainability-linked loan borrowers are in line with other firms after controlling for industry composition. Green bond, green loan, and sustainability-linked loan borrowers lower their emission intensity over time at a faster rate than other firms. … Direct financial benefits through lower debt cost are unlikely to be a major factor given the lack of conclusive evidence of a substantive pricing difference between green and conventional debt in the literature” (S. 21/22).

Impactfondskritik: How SDG-aligned is ESG? Putting sustainable funds to the test von Elisabeth Steyn und Jose M Lopez Sanz von Util vom 24. September 2021: „At a sector, industry and company level, the exposures of sustainable and total fund groups are similarly aligned—despite an average 43% higher fee for the former. Similar exposure, heavily weighted to a small number of tech companies, is bad for the end investor and bad for the SDGs … While sustainable funds minimise negative impact, on a net basis, neither group has a significant positive impact. Both groups negatively affect every environmental target. While 77 of the sustainable fund names contain the terms ‘green’, ‘clean’, ‘climate’, or ‘sustainable’, only four have a positive impact across any of the environmental SDGs—and one of those was recently rebalanced due to liquidity concerns. Investing in a small basket of renewables may be good for the environment, but it yields concentration risks” (S. 3).

Gutes E und S reduzieren Kreditkosten: The impact of environmental, social and corporate governance responsibility on the cost of shortand long-term debt von Piotr Ratajczak und Grzegorz Mikołajewicz vom 30. Juli 2021 (#24): “Linear regression was applied to a unique dataset on CSR and cost of debt for 300 companies recognized in 2017 by Corporate Knights as the most sustainable companies in the world. … The findings show that the involvement in environmental issues decreases the cost of long-term debt whereas the involvement in social issues brings benefits to short- and long-term debt. Surprisingly the greater the involvement in corporate governance, the higher the cost of debt in all time horizons.” (abstract).

EZB Klimaimpact: Climate change and monetary policy in the euro area von der Europäischen Zentralbank vom 6. Oktober 2021 (#91): “This paper … first investigates macroeconomic and financial risks stemming from climate change and from policies aimed at climate mitigation and adaptation, as well as the regulatory and fiscal effects of reducing carbon emissions. In this context, it assesses the need to adapt macroeconomic models and the Eurosystem/ECB staff economic projections underlying the monetary policy decisions. It further considers the implications of climate change for the conduct of monetary policy, in particular the implications for the transmission of monetary policy, the natural rate of interest and the correct identification of shocks. Model simulations using the ECB’s New Area-Wide Model (NAWM) illustrate how the interactions of climate change, financial and fiscal fragilities could significantly restrict the ability of monetary policy to respond to standard business cycle fluctuations. The paper concludes with an analysis of a set of potential monetary policy measures to address climate risks, insofar as they are in line with the ECB’s mandate” (abstract).

Grüne Anleihesignale: ESMA Report on Trends, Risks and Vulnerabilities vom 1. September 2021: “The European green bond market is attracting a growing number of corporate issuers, which has implications for the environmental impact of these instruments and their liquidity. … We show that, between 2009 and 2019, energy firms, utilities and banks that issued a green bond were much more likely to disclose emissions data, and they have on average reduced their carbon intensity to a larger extent than other firms – confirming the view that green bonds act as a signal of firms’ climate-related commitments. … Green bond liquidity appears to be tighter, but the differential with conventional bonds has remained small and broadly constant during the COVID-19 turmoil, suggesting no particular vulnerability for the green segment of the corporate bond market“ (S. 6).

Mehr Ölfinanzierung: Drill, Baby, drill – How banks, investors and insurers are driving oil and gas expansion in the Arctic von Eren Can Ileri, Henri Her, Alix Mazounie und Lucie Pinson von Reclaim Finance vom 23. September 2021: “In the next five years Arctic oil & gas production is set to increase by 20%. …Top backers of Arctic expansionists include banks committed to restricting oil & gas financing in the Arctic: JPMorgan Chase (top globally with $18.6bn between 2016-2020), Barclays (4th largest, $13.2bn) Citigroup (6th, $12.2bn) and BNP Paribas (7th, $11.8bn). …The biggest investors supporting Arctic expansionists include BlackRock, Vanguard and Amundi. … Four out of eight banks that implemented an Arctic policy before 2020 have since increased financing to Arctic expansionists: BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Natixis, and HSBC” (S. 6/7).

Wenige grünmutige Banken: Banking Beyond Climate Commitments: Transforming Client Engagement and Products & Services for a Net-Zero Emissions Future von Jacob Waslander, Julie Bos und Yili Wu vom World Resources Institute vom 30.August 2021: “Values-based banks … demonstrate how a profitable business model can be linked with Paris alignment in the banking sector. Values-based banks have made significant progress in setting emissions reduction targets, accounting for their financed emissions, engaging with their clients on Paris alignment, and offering Paris aligned products and services. … None of the banks—except for values-based banks—wanted to exclude clients. Although they may have policies excluding financial or advisory services for certain types of transactions, they have no clear exclusion policies at the client level” (S. 2).

Pensions-ESG-Risiko: ESG and Downside Risks: Implications for Pension Funds von Zacharias Sautner und Laura T. Starks vom 7. Juli 2021 (#108): “We argue that the long-term horizons of pension funds exposes them to the long-lived effects of many ESG risks, especially those related to climate change. The potential consequences of being underfunded also leaves pension funds particularly exposed to ESG-related downside risks. … We provide evidence showing that institutional investors think that climate risks are imminent today and have important financial implications for their portfolio firms. We also show that these risks are priced in financial markets. Finally, we present evidence on whether and how institutional investors address climate-related risks in the investment process. We show that the investors tend to prefer to employ risk management and engagement strategies, rather than divestment, to address the climate risk in their portfolios. Overall, our evidence implies that pension funds should develop processes to identify, measure, and manage ESG-related downside risks, especially those related to climate change” (S. 15/16).

Grüner Schweizer Investmentbedarf: Sustainable Finance – Investment and financing needed for Switzerland to reach net zero by 2050 von Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) und Boston Consulting Group vom August 2021: “Switzerland’s transition to a low-carbon economy will require total investments of CHF 387.2 bn over the next 30 years, the bulk of which (an estimated 77 percent) will be concentrated in the 2020s and 2030s … A large part of the investments required are concentrated on the sectors Light Road Traffic, Buildings and Heavy Road Traffic. A comparison with the average annual increase in mortgage volume of CHF 30.1 bn shows that, although the additional investment required for the banking system’s transition is quite substantial, it does not threaten stability and is not beyond reach. The annual investment needed to achieve climate targets works out at around two percent of Switzerland’s gross domestic product (2019: CHF 727 bn)” (S. 9).

Schweizer Transparenz: Grundlagen einer transparenten ESG Berichterstattung von Ralf Frank, Bernd Kasemir und Sabine Döbeli in Absolut/impact 3/2021 (Paywall): Der Bericht spricht sich sehr fundiert für die Schweizer Sustainable Finance Transaparenzempfehlungen aus. Mein Kommentar: Mein Nachhaltigkeitsreporting siehe FutureVest Equity Sustainable Development Goals R – DE000A2P37T6 – A2P37T

Impact-Anfang: Impact – Strategisches Zukunftsthema für den Markt Nachhaltiger Geldanlagen von Florian Sommer und Helge Wulsdorf vom Forum Nachhaltige Geldanlagen vom 20. Juki 2021: „Grundsätzlich hat jedes Investment einen Impact, unabhängig davon, ob es sich hierbei um eine nachhaltige Anlage handelt oder nicht. … Die Gefahr von Green- beziehungsweise Impact-Washing ist daher, ob bewusst oder unbewusst in Kauf genommen, nicht von der Hand zu weisen. … Weitere wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen sind notwendig, um die Thematik umfassender und tiefgreifender zu verstehen. Insbesondere das Verständnis von Impactmessung muss weiter geschärft werden“.

Traditionelle Investments

Unerklärte Low-Vola Anomalie: The Risk-Return Relation Puzzle von Hui Guo und Yu-Jou Pai vom 15. Sepember 2021 (#70): “A positive stock market variance-return relation is the key building block of rational-expectations asset pricing models. Empirical evidence is elusive despite forty years of intensive academic research. The conjecture is also resoundingly refuted by the late 1990s’ dotcom bubble featured by sharp increases in both stock market prices and variance. In my view, explaining the risk-return relation puzzle should be one of main focuses in future asset pricing research … Addressing this puzzling empirical finding substantially improves understanding of aggregate economic activity, time-varying uncertainty, and asset prices” (S. 24).

Pseudo-Optimierungsrisiken: Are Stock Markets Becoming More Correlated? Von Nicolas Rabener vom 19. September 2021: First, we calculate the annual rolling correlations of the Japanese, European, and Asian excluding Japanese stock markets to the US, which were 0.03, 0.45, and 0.27, respectively, in the period from 1990 to 2021. … We observe a moderate but steady increase in the correlation of international to US stock markets from the 1990s to the global financial crisis in 2008, but no significant changes thereafter. … there seems to be no relationship between how factors in the US and Japan or Asia excluding Japan trade, which is likely a reflection of the low correlations between these stock markets. … the low correlation can simply be explained by different time zones as the Japanese stock market closes before the US opens. … If using data from the same time zone, then correlations are higher and show stock markets that trade synchronously”.

Aktive Fonds ohne Outperformance: Mutual Fund Efficiency in Europe von Marta Vidal und Javier Vidal-García vom 4. September 2021 (#21): “… we evaluate the market efficiency of the European mutual fund industry … With a unique sample of domestic equity funds, we use several performance measures and non-parametric evaluation … most mutual fund manager are not able to beat their national stock market and underperform in most cases” (S. 13).

Kausalität statt Korrelation: Causality Testing in Equity Markets A Systematic Literature Review von Markus Schuller, Andreas. D. A. Haberl und Ilia Zaichenkov vom 1. Oktober 2021 (#54): “Our systematic literature review on the topic of causality in equity markets from 2010-2020 aimed to provide the reader with an introduction to and overview of the subject” (abstract).

Quant-Fallen: Escaping The Sisyphean Trap: How Quants Can Achieve Their Full Potential von Marcos López de Prado vom 21. September 2021 (#1972): “Investing can be characterized as a set of data science problems … Traditional statistics (econometrics) is ill-equipped to tackle the complexity of financial markets” (S. 2).

Alternative Investments

Argumente gegen Immobilienfonds: In an Apples-to-Apples Comparison, Public Real Estate Investments Outperform Private Ones in Institutional Investor von Jessica Hamlin vom 23. August 2021: “In a new study published in the Journal of Portfolio Management’s real estate issue, authors Thomas Arnold, David Ling, and Andy Naranjo found that, when compared side-by-side, real estate investment trusts outperformed U.S. closed-end private equity real estate, or PERE, funds by 165 basis points annually. … On a global scale, REITs outperformed a sample of 255 international PERE funds by an average of 194 basis points, according to the study. …And when public market risk like risk, leverage, illiquidity, and uncertainty were factored in, REITs came out even stronger. … On average, there is higher leverage in closed-end private funds, which means they harbor more debt”.

Menschliche Venture-Engel: Angel Investor Impact: Clues from the Shark Tank von Mark V. Cannice und Ludwig B. Chincarini vom 27. August 2021 (#28): “This paper explores the investment impact and performance of a unique group of angel investors, those featured on the television show, Shark Tank. We explore the relationship between their individual characteristics such as their experience, reputation, and network with the performance of their investments. Our findings are counter-intuitive in that we find that many characteristics do not appear to impact performance as measured by survival and website traffic. Furthermore, we found that the Sharks do not have the ability to select outperforming companies on average. However, we found the reputational impact of Shark Tank as a venue is significant” (abstract).

NFT-Analyse: Alternative Investments in the Fintech Era: The Risk and Return of Non-fungible Token (NFT) von De-Rong Kong und Tse-Chun Lin vom 20. September 2021 (#378): “The average monthly returns on NFTs range from 6.10% to 44.11%, and the standard deviations fluctuate between 44.35% and 74.57%, leading to a Sharpe ratio comparable to the NASDAQ index. NFT prices surge when there is a drastic increase in demand for alternative investments and a search for yield, especially in a low interest rate environment. We also find that the pricing of NFT largely depends on a token’s scarceness and an investor’s aesthetic preference. Hence, conventional asset-pricing models are unlikely to explain NFT returns“ (abstract).

Kryptische Cryptoinvestoren? Distrust or Speculation? The Socioeconomic Drivers of U.S. Cryptocurrency Investments von Raphael Auer und David Tercero-Lucas von der BIS vom Juli 2021: “… we disprove the hypothesis that cryptocurrency investors are motivated by distrust in fiat currencies or regulated finance. Compared with the general population, investors show no differences in their level of security concerns with either cash or commercial banking services. We find that cryptocurrency investors tend to be educated, young and digital natives. In recent years, a gap in ownership of cryptocurrencies across genders has emerged. We examine how investor characteristics vary across cryptocurrencies and show that owners of cryptocurrencies increasingly tend to hold their investment for longer periods” (abstract).

Viel Krypto-Betrug: Old Frauds with a New Sauce: Digital Coins and Behavioral Paradigms von Daniel Dupuis und Kimberley Gleason vom …: “… crypto-fraud schemes hold an allure to many individuals. Six old schemes recycled for applicability to digital assets, described here, are ransomware, price manipulation, improper disclosures, pump and dumps, Ponzi schemes, and spoof sites and fake apps. All have generated significant economic losses to investors thus far” (S. 25/26).

Behavioral Finance und Advicetech

Ist Mindfulness teuer? Being Present: The Influence of Mindfulness on Financial Decisions von William Bazley, Carina Cuculiza und Kevin Pisciotta vom 1. September 2021 (#44): “Mindfulness meditation is emerging as an accessible and effective therapeutic that positively affects well-being and influences behavior. …. we show that individuals in a state of mindfulness apply higher discount rates to future financial payouts … we find that mindful individuals allocate less to risky assets that typically provide future economic gains and make less efficient investment portfolio trading decisions. In particular, state mindfulness induces investors to realize their investment gains, which leads to lower portfolio performance” (S. 25).

Attraktive Fonds-App: Generation Stupid or Generation Smart? An Analysis of Young Investors in Germany and Austria von Torsten Harms vom 2. September 2021 (#31): “We only regarded young German and Austrian investors that opted to invest into a single low-cost funds consisting of companies that are linked to regional everyday consumption. The investment could only be accessed through an app and required an active savings plan. …. we saw that these younger investors seem to invest relatively “smart” and are able to outperform the market by aggressively investing during market downturns. … Studies … have shown that investors tend to invest in stocks from which they have received recent news or information. A highly interactive app like the analyzed funds does exactly that: Provide investors with a constant news stream on the invested stocks and thus should help to increase investor retention. …. studies … show that shoppers tend to buy things from manufacturers into which they are also invested … the high frequency of usage on interactive investment app might increase this spending preference even more … the analyzed investment form might provide financial institutions with a new perspective of their role, increase customer interaction and provide new revenue streams in terms of content placement” (S. 12/13).

Grüne AI? Consumers Are Willing to Pay a Price for Explainable, But Not for Green AI von Pascal D. König, Stefan Wurster und Markus B. Siewert vom 24. Juli 2021 (#56): “Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a general-purpose technology is expected to support people with a large range of tasks. A major challenge is therefore to manage the long-term societal impacts of this technology. Two central concerns that have emerged in this respect are the transparency and environmental sustainability of AI. The present paper studies how much people value these two features using the example of personal AI assistants. The results … based on a sample of more than 1.000 respondents from Germany indicate that people hardly care about the energy efficiency of AI; and while they do value transparency through explainable AI, this added value of an application is offset by minor costs“ (abstract).

Kleinanleger haben Impact: The Equity Market Implications of the Retail Investment Boom von Philippe van der Beck und Coralie Jaunin vom 29. Juni 2021 (#3441): “We find that the majority of all institutional investors – who hold over 60% of the US equity market – have inelastic demand. Because they respond inelastically to price changes, the relatively small retail sector can have a substantial impact on prices. Robinhood traders provided considerable liquidity to the stock market in Q1 and amplified the recovery in Q2. In their absence, the aggregate market capitalization of the smallest quintile of US stocks would have been 25% lower in Q2. While their price impact is concentrated towards smaller stocks, they are able to affect the price of some large companies, which are being held primarily by passive investors“ (S. 24/25).

Robos mit Impact: Nudged into Better Portfolios and Lower Risk: Robo-Advice and Savings Decisions von Konstantin Bräuer vom 24. September 2021 (#21): “… I explore how robo-advice changes investors’ SP choices and document three main results. First, default options improve robo-advice users’ fund choices towards lower-cost and more diversified funds. Second, many investors – also those who previously held all-equity portfolios – adhere to the default asset allocation that is associated with a 50% equity exposure, although they could construct riskier SP portfolios through the robo-advisor. Third, I document considerable heterogeneity in longer-term adherence to robo-advisor recommendations. First-time SP users are more inert and stick to the robo-advisor’s proposed asset allocation while experienced SP users quickly readjust their equity exposure away from the robo-advisor’s recommendation” (abstract).

Nachhaltige Pensionäre? Eliciting Pension Beneficiaries’ Sustainability Preferences: Why and How? Von Rob M.M.J. Bauer und Paul M.A. Smeets vom 24. Juli 2021 (#51): “We explore whether beneficiaries of pension plans should have a voice in the fund’s sustainable investments. We hypothesize that the answer to this question depends on a fund’s legal and societal contexts, benchmarking pressure, and fund-specific factors such as the fund’s size and the board’s composition. … We provide an example of a fund that gave its participants a real vote, while avoiding the pitfalls that come with hypothetical surveys on individual preferences” (abstract).