Italian Asset Managers＇ Behavior： Evidence on Overconfidence, Risk Taking and Gender

This paper offers new insights into the Italian mutual fund industry. Surveying Italian professionals, we do not only reveal typical gender differences but also detect divergence to their German counterparts. While disclosing Italian professionals＇ overly positive self-assessment in general, we find evidence for male overconfidence in particular--though without being accompanied by excessive control illusion of the own information level. Asset managers＇ risk taking reveals further differences： Italian female professionals do not only assess themselves as more risk averse than their male colleagues, they also prefer a more passive portfolio management compared to the level they are allowed to. Moreover, in a tournament scenario near the end of the investment period female asset managers do not try to become the ultimate top performer when they have outperformed their peer group so far. However, in case of underperformance, the risk of deviating from the benchmark makes especially female professionals willing to seize a chance of catching up. Overall, compared to their German counterparts, we find Italian asset managers to be slightly more risk averse. Matching bounded former results on Italian mutual funds, we discuss interdependencies as well as impact of our findings at the individual asset managers＇ level on trading activity, management style and performance.

LBOs in Theory and Practice, Learning Outcomes of a Crisis

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not a financial crisis has an impact on the use of financial tools like MBO （management buy-outs）. For a long time LBO （leveraged buyout） has being considered as an easy and tax saving way to transfer the property rights of SMEs companies. Financial markets speculation on the same time used this tool in a non reasonable way and transformed it on a bubble increasing furthermore the financial crisis. In a certain extend this paper proves that what happened is a remake of what happened in the late 1990. From a theoretical point of view the article proves that the LBO＇s are just a partial answer to the agency problems very present to the literature.

Economic policy uncertainty and executive turnover

This paper examines whether economic uncertainty increases executive turnover.The negative perception perspective and business change theory suggest that executives are more likely to leave their jobs during periods of corporate distress.However,the additive effects of internal and external risk are thought to prompt firms to carefully consider executive turnover,thereby reducing the likelihood of executive changes.Based on the literature,we propose a checkand-balance hypothesis for the relationship between external uncertainty and executive change,according to which the optimal superposition of the internal and external risks stemming from increased external uncertainty would be to avoid a wave of executive departures.Using a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2019 and the China economic policy uncertainty index of Baker et al.(2013),we examine the impact of economic policy uncertainty on executive turnover and our results support the check-and-balance hypothesis.Our findings enhance our understanding of how economic policy uncertainty affects executive turnover,and enrich the literature on corporate risk management and strategic management.

To forage or hide？ Threat-sensitive foraging behaviour in wild, non-reproductive passerine birds

Because antipredator behaviours are costly, the threat-sensitive predator avoidance hypothesis predicts that individual animals should express predator-avoidance behaviour proportionally to the perceived threat posed by the predator. Here, we experimentally tested this hypothesis by providing wild passerine birds supplemental food （on a raised feeding platform） at either 1 or 4 m from the edge of forest cover （potential refuge）, in either the presence or absence of a nearby simulated predation threat （a sharp-shinned hawk Accipiter striatus model）. Compared with the control treatment, we observed proportionally fewer bird visits to the food patch, and the birds took longer to re-emerge from forest refuge and return to feed at the food patch, after the hawk presentation than before it. The observed threat-sensitive latency-to-return response was stronger when the food patch was further away from the nearest refuge. Overall, our results are consistent with the predictions of the threat-sensitive predator avoidance hypothesis in that wild passerine birds （primarily black-capped chickadees Poecile atricapillus） exhibited more intense antipre- dator behavioural responses with increasing level of apparent threat. The birds were thus sensitive to their local perceived threat of predation and traded-off safety from predation （by refuging） and foraging gains in open habitat in a graded, threat-sensitive manner [Current Zoology 60 （6）： 719-728, 2014].