Suchergebnisse

AbstractWe study how the investor profile influences the asset allocation recommendations of professional advisors. We find the investor's perceived risk attitude influences more the mix of risky assets, whereas the socioeconomic variables influence more the cash percentage. The recommendations are consistent with a diversification behavior driven by actual asset correlations. These findings support the utility of investor advisory that may help enhance the risk and return trade‐off. The main drawback of the recommendations may consist in the degree of customization that is limited by the small number of investor characteristics actually influencing the asset allocation.

AbstractThe last three decades have witnessed a huge amount of research exploring the linkage between companies' sustainability performance (SP), sustainability disclosure and financial performance (FP). Researchers have applied various methods and techniques to investigate this relationship, yet the results remain equivocal. In this article, we look inside this black box by considering various manifestations of sustainability practices and investigating their link with FP. We apply a manual content analysis technique to analyse the sustainability reports of the 100 best‐performing US firms. Our results reveal that fragmentation in the results is caused by the SP measurement. Additionally, we note that the interlinkages between different SP dimensions and sub‐dimensions are weak and somewhat contradictory. The results help draw important policy implications for the development of an SP reporting framework.

The paper provides a comprehensive model of trust formation in financial advisory using a dataset of 1,184 Italian advisors that differ across some specific characteristics (bank advisors or tied agents, market maturity of the bank/institution they work for, classified as new player or incumbent). The goal is twofold: on one side, we aim at demonstrating the validity of a trust-formation model that explicitly accounts for both a professional and a relational component; on the other, we wish to investigate whether different types of financial advisory induce different trust formation processes. The latter goal is of particular relevance with respect to the introduction of the MiFiD II Directive, as different trust formation processes may rely on features that are differentially affected by the regulatory changes. Through the estimation of a structural equation model, we are able to prove both its validity and the differential impact of the two dimensions in the trust-formation process. In particular, we find that the novelties introduced by the legislator, favouring the anticipated reciprocation dimension, could help increasing competition in the advisory industry. In fact, this dimension is the one that plays a fundamental role for the advisors of new entrant institutions and that could help support their accreditation in the market.