Search results

How a micro-founded discipline such as economics could deal with the increasing global economic reality? This question has been asked frequently since the last economic crisis that appeared in 2008. In this challenging context, some commentators have turned their attention to a new area of knowledge coming from physics: econophysics which mainly focuses on a macro-analysis of economic systems. By showing that concepts used by econophysicists are consistent with an existing economic knowledge (developed by J.S. Mill), the purpose of this paper is to claim that an interdisciplinary perspective is possible between these two communities.

The authors propose a historical and conceptual analysis of the key concept of emergence to emphasize the potential bridge between econophysics and economics.

Six methodological arguments will be developed in order to show the existence of conceptual bridges as a necessary condition for the elaboration of a common language between economists and econophysics which would not be superfluous, in this challenging context, to clarify the growing complexity of economic phenomena.

Although the economics and econophysics study same the complex economic phenomena, very few collaborations exist between them. This paper paves a conceptual/methodological path for more collaboration between the two fields.

How did investors in the Swedish Premium Pension System (PPS) react to the stock market shock ignited by the COVID-19 pandemic?

The authors use fund-level data from the Swedish Pensions Agency on investment choices in the PPS. For each fund, the authors use monthly information on the number of investors and holdings' market value up to November 2020. The authors also use information on the total number of portfolio changes per day. For analyzing whether PPS investors reacted to the pandemic with claiming their pension, the authors use monthly data on the number of investors of a certain age group who initiate their public pension payment.

Trades more than doubled, and shifted capital from equity funds to low risk interest funds. In economic terms, however, trading stayed at low levels–less than two percent of investors traded in March 2020 and there was no effect on pension withdrawals. The increased trading during the market tumult was disproportionately concentrated among investors in the top of the pension capital distribution.

With fund-level data, the authors cannot investigate what in particular made retirement investors stay calm in the midst of a severe market decline. Either, those investors have a long-term investment horizon as they save for their pension or particular features of the system's choice architecture induce inertia and discourage from trading. The sub-group analyses are more consistent with the explanation that PPS-induced inertia is responsible for the relatively small increase in trading activity, but future research could exploit individual level data to explore this in more detail.

The often-criticized PPS choice architecture provided positive side effects in times of a severe market shock by shielding retail investors from committing trading mistakes when trying to outsmart the market.

The study complements previous evidence on the effects of COVID-19 on investor activity. The small response of PPS investors to COVID-19 is in line with earlier US findings on 401(k) accounts during the 2007 financial crisis (Tang et al., 2012) and industry reports about the COVID-19 period (see, e.g. Mitchell, 2020). The authors find no effects at all on public pension withdrawals in Sweden, while evidence from US 401(k) plans indicates a small share of workers taking COVID-related early withdrawals.

This study aims to organise and present the development of asset pricing models in the international environment. The stock market integration and cross-listing lead us to another objective of bibliometric analysis for “International Asset Pricing” to provide a complete overview and give scope and directions for future research.

Web of Science database is used to search with “International Asset Pricing.” Of 3,438 articles, 2,487 articles are selected for the final bibliometric analysis. Various research such as citation analysis, keyword analysis, author’s and corresponding author's analysis have been conducted.

The bibliometric analysis finds that the USA comes out to be the country where the maximum research was conducted on the topic. The keyword analysis was also analysed to evaluate the significant areas of the research. Risk, return and international asset pricing are the most frequently used keywords. The year 2020 has the maximum number of published research articles and citations due to the change in the market structure worldwide and the effect of Covid-19 across the world.

The present paper provides the collection, classification and comprehensive analysis of “International Asset pricing,” which may help the academicians, researchers and practitioners for future research for the relevant subject area.