المؤلفون: Wolfgang Breuer, Thorsten Hens, Astrid Juliane Salzmann, Mei Wang

الوصف: This article jointly analyses a behavioural and a cultural concept to explain household debt portfolio choice. The behavioural approach explores the role of time preferences on household debt maturity in a theoretical model and a numerical analysis. We derive a positive relationship between the long-term discount factor δ and the optimal maturity of household loans. The cultural approach examines whether national culture is a reasonable predictor for household debt maturity. We show that culture is an important factor for households’ borrowing decisions and has even more predictive power than time preferences. Countries with higher scores on the Hofstede dimension of long-term orientation tend to have shorter household debt maturity. Time preferences incur a primarily mediating role, because the effect of national culture on the borrowing decision is reduced, as the long-term discount factor δ increases. ; Finance, Culture, International, Time Preferences, Risk Preferences, Decision Theory

المؤلفون: Thorsten Hens, Marc Oliver Rieger, Mei Wang

الوصف: Despite the well-known benefits of international diversification and global market integration, most investors still allocate proportionally too much domestic assets and too little foreign assets in their portfolio (French and Poterba, 1991). Various explanations have been proposed to explain this so-called home bias puzzle, including rational justifications such as differences in corporate governance and investor protection (Dahlquist et al., 2003), informational advantages (Brennan and Cao, 1997; Grinblatt and Keloharju, 2001) hedging domestic inflation (Cooper and Kaplanis, 1994), as well as less rational reasons such as familiarity biases (Huberman, 2001), patriotism (Morse and Shive, 2011) and overoptimism (French and Poterba, 1991; Weber et al., 2005)… ; Finance, Culture, International, Time Preferences, Risk Preferences, Decision Theory

المؤلفون: Thorsten Hens, Marc Oliver Rieger, Mei Wang

الوصف: Gender roles are arguably one of the key differences between cultures. Women do not enjoy the same rights as men in all countries, and even if they theoretically do, their rights might be limited by customs and informal rules. Moreover, gender roles can still vary markedly between countries in which women and men indeed have the same rights… ; Finance, Culture, International, Time Preferences, Risk Preferences, Decision Theory

المؤلفون: Yujing Gong, Mei Wang, Dennis Dlugosch

الوصف: This paper examines how ambiguity aversion and information uncertainty jointly influence the momentum effect across countries. Most countries in our sample exhibit information uncertainty effect, i.e., the momentum effect is stronger for firms with greater uncertainty (e.g., smaller, younger, and more volatile firms). Moreover, we find that such information uncertainty effect is stronger in countries with lower degree of ambiguity aversion. The interaction effect of uncertainty and ambiguity aversion is mainly driven by losers, suggesting the information avoidance or “Ostrich Effect”. We offer two possible explanations for this result based on the potential impacts of ambiguity aversion on information reaction and information seeking. ; Finance, Culture, International, Time Preferences, Risk Preferences, Decision Theory

المؤلفون: Mei Wang, Marc Oliver Rieger, Thorsten Hens

الوصف: We present results from the first large-scale international survey on time preference, conducted in 53 countries. All countries exhibit hyperbolic discounting patterns, i.e., the immediate future is discounted more than far future. We also observe higher heterogeneity for shorter time horizons, consistent with the pattern reviewed by Frederick, Loewenstein and O’Donoghue (2002). Cultural factors as captured by the Hofstede cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 1991) contribute significantly to the variation of time discounting, even after controlling for economic factors, such as GDP, inflation rate and growth rate. In particular, higher levels of Uncertainty Avoidance are associated with stronger hyperbolic discounting, whereas higher degrees of Individualism and Long Term Orientation predict stronger tendency to wait for larger payoffs. We also find the waiting tendency is correlated with innovation, environmental protection, crediting rating, and body mass index at country level after controlling for county wealth. These results help us to enhance the understanding of differences across financial markets and economic behavior worldwide. ; Finance, Culture, International, Time Preferences, Risk Preferences, Decision Theory

المؤلفون: Marc Oliver Rieger, Mei Wang

الوصف: Ambiguity aversion has been suggested as a potential explanation for the equity premium puzzle in recent theoretical models. To test this hypothesis, we measure the amount of ambiguity aversion in a large-scale international survey. A comparison to the average equity premia in these countries demonstrates that ambiguity aversion does, indeed, have a significant influence on the amount of equity risk premium, even when controlling for macroeconomic parameters. Finally, we connect differences in ambiguity aversion to differences in uncertainty avoidance, one of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. ; Finance, Culture, International, Time Preferences, Risk Preferences, Decision Theory

المؤلفون: Marc Oliver Rieger, Mei Wang, Thorsten Hens

الوصف: We conduct a standardized survey on risk preferences in 53 countries worldwide and estimate cumulative prospect theory parameters from the data. The parameter estimates show that significant differences on the cross-country level are to some extent robust and related to economic and cultural differences. In particular, a closer look on probability weighting underlines gender differences, economic effects, and cultural impact on probability weighting. The data set is a useful starting point for future research that investigates the impact of risk preferences on the market level. ; Finance, Culture, International, Time Preferences, Risk Preferences, Decision Theory

المؤلفون: Thorsten Hens, Marc Oliver Rieger, Mei Wang

الوصف: When eliciting time preferences with typical trade-off questions between the present and the future, we do not measure only the discounting factor. Instead, there are several other factors that may influence answers. This is, on the one hand, due to the shape of the subject’s utility function, and, on the other hand, due to the possibility to “hedge” choices by saving or taking a loan. In this chapter, we develop theoretical predictions for the impact of wealth, growth rate, and risk aversion on preferences between intertemporal choices. In our model, access to financial markets is limited (a crucial factor leading to very different predictions as compared to the classical case of complete market access). We confirm the predictions of our model using data from a large international survey on time discounting, conducted in 53 countries. ; Finance, Culture, International, Time Preferences, Risk Preferences, Decision Theory

المؤلفون: Marc Oliver Rieger, Mei Wang, Thorsten Hens

الوصف: We present results from a large-scale international survey on risk preferences conducted in 53 countries. In all countries, we find, on average, an attitude of risk aversion in gains and of risk seeking in losses. The degree of risk aversion shows significant cross-country differences. Moreover, risk attitudes in our sample depend not only on economic conditions but also on cultural factors, as measured by the Hofstede dimensions individualism and uncertainty avoidance. The data may also serve as an interesting starting point for further research on cultural differences in behavioral economics. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1869Test. ; Finance, Culture, International, Time Preferences, Risk Preferences, Decision Theory

المؤلفون: Thorsten Hens, Marc Oliver Rieger, Mei Wang

الوصف: Risk and time are central to the understanding of economics. In today’s colorful and multicultural world, it is therefore only natural to wonder how and why attitudes toward risk and time differ internationally… ; Finance, Culture, International, Time Preferences, Risk Preferences, Decision Theory