The Lehman Sisters Claim

E-print/Working paper (2020)

I evaluate Christine Lagarde´s claim that more female leaders can be associated with more prudence, and less of the risky decision-making that had provoked the crisis. Indeed, the proportion of women who ... [more ▼]

I evaluate Christine Lagarde´s claim that more female leaders can be associated with more prudence, and less of the risky decision-making that had provoked the crisis. Indeed, the proportion of women who are employed in decision-making and management roles in governments, large enterprises and institutions varies substantially across European countries and is oftentimes below 30%. Research suggests that in addition to biological differences, men and women show morphological dissimilarities in specific brain regions, which explain the observed differences in behavior. As a result, female decision makers tend to be more risk averse, better suited to carefully analyze a problem, superior in multitasking and better in creating solutions that work for a group. Not surprisingly, firms with more female decision makers tend to outperform their peers in terms of productivity, profitability and stock performance while taking fewer risks. In this paper, I aim to explore the effect of female decision making on aggregate equity returns. Relying on an equilibrium asset-pricing model in an economy under jump diffusion, I decompose the moments of the returns of European stock market indices into a diffusive (systematic) risk and an (idiosyncratic) extreme event risk part. For a balanced panel of European countries, I find empirical evidence for a Lehman sisters’ effect: female decision making is an important determinant of (idiosyncratic) extreme event risk. As a result, stock markets in countries with more female decision makers are characterized by higher risk aversion, lower volatility and more positive return asymmetry, primarily driven by extreme event risk, e.g. the lower frequency of negative jumps. Results are robust to the inclusion of various controls for other country- or market-specific characteristics. [less ▲]

Why is the Market Skewness-Return Relationship Negative?

Scientific Conference (2020, January 23)

Model Uncertainty and Pricing Performance in Option Valuation

in The Journal of Derivatives (2020), 27(3), 31-49

The objective of this paper is to evaluate option pricing model performance at the cross sectional level. For this purpose, we propose a statistical framework, in which we in particular account for the ... [more ▼]

The objective of this paper is to evaluate option pricing model performance at the cross sectional level. For this purpose, we propose a statistical framework, in which we in particular account for the uncertainty associated with the reported pricing performance. Instead of a single figure, we determine an entire probability distribution function for the loss function that is used to measure option pricing model performance. This methodology enables us to visualize the effect of parameter uncertainty on the reported pricing performance. Using a data driven approach, we confirm previous evidence that standard volatility models with clustering and leverage effects are sufficient for the option pricing purpose. In addition, we demonstrate that there is short-term persistence but long-term heterogeneity in cross-sectional option pricing information. This finding has two important implications. First, it justifies the practitioner’s routine to refrain from time series approaches, and instead estimate option pricing models on a cross-section by cross-section basis. Second, the long term heterogeneity in option prices pinpoints the importance of measuring, comparing and testing option pricing model for each cross-section separately. To our knowledge no statistical testing framework has been applied to a single cross-section of option prices before. We propose a methodology that addresses this need. The proposed framework can be applied to a broad set of models and data. In the empirical part of the paper, we show by means of example, an application that uses a discrete time volatility model on S&P 500 index options. [less ▲]

THE MARKET SKEWNESS-RETURN RELATIONSHIP

Presentation (2019, October 29)

Fear and Euphoria

Scientific Conference (2019, August 28)

WHY IS THE MARKET SKEWNESS-RETURN RELATIONSHIP NEGATIVE?

E-print/Working paper (2019)

Skewness Risk Premium: Theory and Empirical Evidence

in International Review of Financial Analysis (2019), 63

Using an equilibrium asset and option pricing model in a simple economy under jump diffusion, we show theoretically that the aggregated excess market returns can be predicted by the skewness risk premium ... [more ▼]

Using an equilibrium asset and option pricing model in a simple economy under jump diffusion, we show theoretically that the aggregated excess market returns can be predicted by the skewness risk premium, which is constructed to be the difference between the physical and the risk-neutral skewness. In an empirical application of the model using more than 20 years of data on S&P500 index options, we find that, in line with theory, risk-averse investors demand risk-compensation for holding stocks when the market skewness risk premium is high. However, when we characterize periods of high and low risk aversion, we show that in line with theory, the relationship only holds when risk aversion is high. In periods of low risk aversion, investors demand lower risk compensation, thus substantially weakening the skewness-risk-premium-return trade off. [less ▲]

Asset Pricing Implications of Good Governance

in PLoS ONE (2019), 14 (4)(e0214930), 1-14

Corporate Governance and Skewness in Stock Returns

E-print/Working paper (2019)

This paper analyzes the relationship between corporate governance and idiosyncratic skewness of stock returns. We test this hypothesis by analyzing the impact of external as well as internal governance ... [more ▼]

This paper analyzes the relationship between corporate governance and idiosyncratic skewness of stock returns. We test this hypothesis by analyzing the impact of external as well as internal governance provisions, and are thus able to provide an overall understanding of the relationship between governance and firm-specific return asymmetries. Our results show that better governance leads to a reduction in idiosyncratic skewness in relatively non-competitive industries. In relatively competitive industries, governance has less to no impact on firm-specific return skewness. Furthermore, an overall increase in transparency, quality and disclosure of information, proxied through the Sarbanes Oxley Act, reduces relative idiosyncratic skewness. Our findings can be regarded as detrimental for shareholders, who have a preference for positive idiosyncratic skewness. The evidence contributes to a debate, which suggests that – at the end of the day – an act like Sarbanes-Oxley, which was intended to protect shareholders from accounting errors and frauds and to improve the accuracy of corporate disclosures, comes at the expenses of shareholders. The reduction of idiosyncratic skewness through better governance collides with shareholder’s preference for idiosyncratic and positively skewed stock returns, which present a lottery like upside option of monetary gains and value creation through the right tail. This side effect of governance is also in line with the literature that highlights potential costs of corporate governance. [less ▲]

Islamic Finance and Economic Growth: New Evidence

Scientific Conference (2019, January 24)

While extensive work has shown that conventional banking development is generally conducive to economic growth, there are only a limited number of studies that investigate the impact of Islamic banking ... [more ▼]

While extensive work has shown that conventional banking development is generally conducive to economic growth, there are only a limited number of studies that investigate the impact of Islamic banking. Importantly, the literature on conventional banking claims that a reverse causality from economy performance to banking may exists, but existing studies on Islamic banking fail to address this potential endogeneity problem. This paper tackles this problem and explores the relationship between Islamic banking development and economic performance in a sample of 32 developed and developing countries based on data spanning the 2000 to 2016 period. The findings show that, although Islamic banks are considered small relative to the total size of the financial sector, Islamic banking is positively correlated with economic growth even after controlling for financial structure, macroeconomic factors and other variables. The outcome is robust across different econometric specifications like pooling OLS, fixed effects, panel data with over-identified GMM, and dynamic difference GMM. The results are confirmed on two different indicators of Islamic banking and hold for different time periods. [less ▲]