Blog

Member of the G53 Financial Literacy and Personal Finance Research Network

I am honored to have been asked to become a founding member of the G53 Financial Literacy and Personal Finance Research Network (G53 Network). Founded by Annamaria Lusardi, the Director of the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center (GFLEC) and a pioneer in financial literacy research, the G53 network aims to promote research into financial literacy and personal finance along the lines of - but in a more globalized manner than - an NBER research program. The G53 network is named after the JEL code for research into financial literacy and was - fittingly - started with 53 researchers.

Managing Director of the Society for Experimental Finance

After the international SARS-COV-2 pandemic necessitated the cancellation of the Society for Experimental Finance's 2020 annual meeting, the University of Innsbruck organized this year's meeting online via GatherTown. The attendees enjoyed a total of 88 paper presentations, 2 keynotes (by Annamaria Lusardi and Stefan Nagel) and 2 talks with a view (by Michael Kirchler and Roberto Weber). As part of the program, the society held its annual meeting, which elected a new managing board, with Sascha Füllbrunn as Secretary, Anita Kopanyi-Peuker as Treasurer and myself as Managing Director. I look forward to this responsibility and challenge.

My PhD student Josef Fink completes his degree with top grade

Today Josef Fink completed his doctoral studies with a dissertation defense that the committee graded "Sehr gut", the top grade in the Austrian grading system. Josef's dissertation, titled "Experiments on the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift", was also graded "Sehr gut". In its core, it is made up of three papers studying the phenomenon of stock prices drifting in the direction of the surprise component of a company's announced earnings for up to four quarters following the initial announcement.

In his first paper, titled "A Review of the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift" and published in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Josef provides the most comprehensive (by a wide margin) review  of the literature on the PEAD phenomenon to date. In his second paper, titled "Earnings Autocorrelation and the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift", Josef studies the role of autocorrelation in the earnings process on the drift. In his third paper, titled "Trading Frictions and the Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift", Josef investigates the role of frictions (i.e., a short-selling ban and transaction fees) on the drift.

I am proud of Josef and congratulate him to this impressive achievement!

New working papers out

The first quarter of the year has been a busy one, with two papers submitted and two new working papers published. In "Trading frictions and the post-earnings-announcement drift", Josef Fink, Erik Theissen and I study the effect of a short selling ban and transaction fees on the post-earnings-announcement drift. We find evidence for lower trading activity and higher asset prices in the presence of these types of frictions.

In "A Critical Perspective on the Conceptualization of Risk in Behavioral and Experimental Finance", Felix Holzmeister, Christoph Huber and I discuss the conceptualization of "risk" in finance, urging researchers to clearly distinguish between risk preferences, risk perceptions, and risk taking. 

I welcome all thoughts and comments on these papers and topics!