Based on 4158 articles from 9 financial journals during 2009-2013 from Web of Science, we use CiteSpace III to construct the knowledge mapping of finance studies. As a result, the primary research power distribution is shown. Further, finance research hotspots and major research fields are revealed via keywords co-occurrence analysis and references co-citation analysis. The findings show that t...

This study addresses two questions based on Danish firms’ practices: first, what are motives for cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CBM&As)? Second, how the external and internal factors influence the firms’ decisions? Based on the literature review, survey questionnaire and multiple-case study that were conducted amongst Danish firms, our empirical evidence supports that CBM&A motives are ...

When company stock is one of the options in a 401(k) plan then even more serious diversification problems can occur. As the recent Enron experience has highlighted, employees with large company stock holdings in their 401(k) plan can discover that they have lost much of their retirement wealth at the very time that they are also losing their job. Even in less drastic circumstances, concentratin...

George Soros’s reflexivity theory is quite compatible with second order cybernetics. Indeed his work shows how to apply ideas in second order cybernetics to economics, finance, and political science. This paper briefly reviews three theories of reflexivity in cybernetics. It provides an introduction to Soros’s version of reflexivity theory and reviews applications in economics and finance. Soro...

Stochastic Portfolio Theory is a flexible framework for analyzing portfolio behavior and equity market structure. This theory was introduced by E.R. Fernholz in the papers (Journal of Mathematical Economics, 1999; Finance & Stochastics, 2001) and in the monograph Stochastic Portfolio Theory (Springer 2002). It was further developed in the papers Fernholz, Karatzas & Kardaras (Finance & Stochast...

Recent literature in empirical finance is surveyed in its relation to underlying behavioral principles, principles which come primarily from psychology, sociology and anthropology. The behavioral principles discussed are: prospect theory, regret and cognitive dissonance, anchoring, mental compartments, overconfidence, overand underreaction, representativeness heuristic, the disjunction effect, ...

This paper tests whether state school finance reform alters neighborhood income homogeneity. One implication of the Tiebout model is that within-community homogeneity declines as a result of an exogenous decrease in the ability of jurisdictions to set local tax and expenditure levels. The property tax revolt and the school finance equalization reform of the 1970s and 1980s offer a test of the r...

The investment performance of a portfolio manager who may engage in market timing behavior depends on market level and volatility timing as well as security selection. We develop new holdings-based performance measures that properly adjust for risk, accommodate all three components and avoid strong assumptions about managers’ behavior. Allowing for market level and volatility timing, there is n...