Finance Panel

The Clark Center for Global Markets explores finance professors’ views on vital policy issues via our Finance Panel.  We regularly poll over 40 individuals on a range of timely and relevant topics.  Panelists not only have the opportunity to respond to a poll’s statements, but an opportunity to comment and provide additional resources, if they wish. The Clark Center then shares the results with the public in a straightforward and concise format.

Please note that from September 2022, the language in our polls will use just two modifiers to refer to the size of an effect:

  • ‘Substantial’: when an effect is large enough that it would make a difference that matters for the behavior involved.
  • ‘Measurable’: when the direction of the effect is clear, but perhaps experts would differ as to whether it is substantial.
Finance

Quarterly Earnings

Question A:

Letting publicly traded firms report earnings annually rather than quarterly would lead their executives to place more weight on long-term issues in their investments and other decisions.

Question B:

A switch from quarterly to annual earnings reports would, on net, benefit shareholders.

 
Finance

Foreign Exchange Interventions

Question A:

It seems likely that Japanese authorities intervened in the foreign exchange market recently to prop up the yen – see, for example: https://www.ft.com/content/455784ec-0465-46ee-8c73-fc5ce3e31c37. In such circumstances, intervention refers to purchases or sales of domestic or foreign currency without changing the monetary policy stance.

Large-scale intervention by public authorities in currency markets can move exchange rates substantially.

Question B:

The effectiveness of foreign exchange interventions can last beyond one month.

 
Finance

Retail Investor Participation in Private Equity

This Finance survey examines that Retail investors account for a large share of global wealth, but a small share in private equity holdings. (see link: https://bain.com/insights/why-private-equity-is-targeting-individual-investors-global-private-equity-report-2023/ (a) A reduction in the barriers to all retail investors investing in private equity funds - notably regulatory restrictions on investor wealth/income and on liquidity - would substantially improve household welfare. 
Finance

Passive Investors and US Banks

This Finance survey examines: Regulator Probes BlackRock and Vanguard Over Huge Stakes in U.S. Banks – The WSJ reports that ‘The FDIC is scrutinizing whether the index-fund giants are sticking to passive roles when it comes to their investments in U.S. banks.' (a) The exemption of passive asset managers from banking rules - such as needing permission when they acquire shares above the 10% threshold - generates measurable risks to the accomplishment of the FDIC's mission 
Finance

Short Selling and Asset Values

This Finance survey examines (a) Allowing short selling of financial securities, such as stocks and government bonds, leads to prices that, on average, are closer to their fundamental values; (b) When short sellers start to establish substantial short positions in a stock, the stock is likely to have been overvalued; (c) Requiring investors to disclose short positions in a stock at the equivalent threshold as they are required to do for long positions would improve the informativeness of stock prices 
Finance

Modern Portfolio Theory

This Finance survey examines that Harry Markowitz, the Nobel Prize-winning pioneer of modern portfolio theory, passed away earlier this year: https://afajof.org/news/in-memoriam-harry-markowitz-past-president-of-the-american-finance-association-1927-2023/ (a) Application of the principles of modern portfolio theory allows investors in practice to achieve substantial improvements in the risk-expected return trade-off relative to naive strategies such as equal-weighting that do not take account of return covariances; (b) A continued fall in commercial real estate valuations would trigger another round of banking panic