Institutional investor sentiment and the mean-variance relationship: Global evidence

Wenzhao Wang and Darren Duxbury

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2021, vol. 191, issue C, 415-441

Abstract: Although a cornerstone of traditional finance theory, empirical evidence in support of a positive mean-variance relation is far from conclusive, with the behavior of retail investors commonly thought to be one of the root causes of departures from this expected relationship. The behavior of institutional investors, conventionally thought to be sophisticated and rational, has recently come under closer scrutiny, including in relation to investor sentiment. Drawing together these two strands of literature, this paper examines the impact of institutional investor sentiment on the mean-variance relation in six regions, including Asia (excl. Japan), Eastern Europe, Eurozone, Japan, Latin America, and the US, and across thirty-eight markets. Empirical evidence supports the differential impact of institutional investor sentiment on the mean-variance relation (i.e., positive or negative), both across regions and across markets. In particular, for markets with cultural proneness to overreaction and a low level of market integrity institutional investor sentiment tends to distort the risk-return tradeoff.

Keywords: Individualism; Institutional investor sentiment; Market integrity; Mean-variance relation; Overreaction; Uncertainty avoidance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G12 G14 G15 G41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268121003711
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:191:y:2021:i:c:p:415-441

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.08.029

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().