G11 - Portfolio Choice; Investment DecisionsReturn

This paper investigates the dependence of the investment behavior of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) on the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance of their underlying investments in public equity holdings during the period of 2007 to 2022 collectively overseeing a substantial 71% of total public equity holding investments by SWFs globally. The unique data set with ESG control variables consist of mainly self-reported Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) ESG information (ESG rating from Refinitiv/LSEG) and dynamic risk assessed ESG information purely based on external evaluation of the firms (Reputational Risk Indicator from RepRisk). The control variable which monitors the Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSI) of target companies is novel to previous studies. Our findings suggest that SWFs still consider self-reported CSR information more than public CSI data in their investment decisions. Furthermore, a change in past ESG data of underlying public equity holdings – both CSR and CSI – does not seem to have a significant effect on the investment into underlying public equity holdings. Our conclusions could help to encourage greater ESG integration into SWF investment strategies and promote sustainable investing practices more broadly not limited to liquid assets.

The research focuses on the calibration and measurement of the relationship between the selected behavioural biases and the risk perceptions of Indian retail investors, as well as its ultimate implications on equity investment decisions. Further, it examines the association of the factors to non-financial determinants such as ESG investing consciousness. The research leveraged a structured questionnaire for data collection across 438 samples. EFA for factor-extraction and assessing dimensional validity; CFA for understanding the factor structure, the validity & reliability of the latent variables; and AMOS-based SEM for the establishment of path analysis and structural causal relationships amongst the variables are used for the study. The study confirms the significant impact of risk perception on equity investment decisions and establishes a significant link between the selected biases for the study and the perceived risk. The findings also indicate a statistically significant relationship between ESG consciousness and the risk perception of investors. Further, there is confirmation of a statistically significant negative moderation effect of ESG consciousness on the relationship between the selected biases and investors’ perceived risk, indicating that higher ESG consciousness weakens the positive relationship between investors’ perceived biases and risk perception.

In this paper, we empirically investigate the effect of short selling on market volatility during exogenously-induced uncertainties. Using the Covid-19 pandemic and the onset of the Russian-Ukraine Conflicts periods as event study, we employ the asymmetric EGARCH model. We show high persistence and asymmetric effects of market volatility during the pre-covid outbreak and post-covid outbreak periods. We find evidence that short selling increases market volatility during the pre-covid outbreak period while the period of the Russian-Ukraine conflict is characterized by reduced volatility. We find no evidence of short selling effect on market volatility during the post-covid outbreak period. Our findings provide significant implications for short-selling strategies during crisis periods.

Commercial real estate loans (CREL) are a modern essential business segment and of major relevance to the financial stability of an economy as they interconnect the financial markets and the real economy. Consequently, CREL are of specific interest to regulatory authorities. As far as the author knows, there exists no universal definition of CREL in the global financial industry and the regulatory environment. This has been subject to criticism due to resulting gaps and bias in data generated by regulatory filing. This study contributes to academia and applied sciences by providing the missing link. It develops a comprehensive categorization of CREL on a foundation of 34 sources predominately provided by regulatory authorities in the US and the EU. The categorization is based on a qualitative synthesis of main CREL characteristics of this particular heterogeneous asset class outlined in the detected sources. The objective of this work is to support the development of a common understanding of this investment segment among banks, institutional investors and regulatory authorities in order to allow an accurate and prompt filing.