Loss aversion, overconfidence of investors and their impact on market performance evidence from the US stock markets

Ahmed Bouteska and Boutheina Regaieg

Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Science, 2018, vol. 25, issue 50, 451-478

Abstract: Purpose - The current study aims to investigate the impacts of two behavioral biases, namely, loss aversion and overconfidence on the performance of US companies. First, the impact of loss aversion on the economic performance of companies was assessed. Second, the impact of overconfidence on market performance was discussed. Design/methodology/approach - This study used around 6,777 quarterly observations on the population of US-insured industrial and services companies over the 2006-2016 period. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression in two panel data models were used to test the hypotheses formulated for the study. Findings - It was documented that the loss-aversion bias negatively affects the economic performance of companies and this is achieved for both sectors. In contrast, the findings suggest that overconfidence positively affects market performance of industrial firms but negatively affects market performance in service firms. Further robust evidence was found that overconfidence bias seems to be dominant, and hence, investors may tend to be more overconfident rather than more loss-averse. Originality/value - This research can be extended by focusing on the following question: What is the impact of the contradictory (positive and negative) effects of an investor's loss aversion and overconfidence on the US company performance in case of realization of a stock market crisis or stock market crash?

Keywords: Decision-making; Economic performance; Market performance; Loss aversion; Overconfidence; Behavioural biases; C12; D53; D81; D82; G11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)

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:eme:jefasp:jefas-07-2017-0081

DOI: 10.1108/JEFAS-07-2017-0081

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Science is currently edited by Nestor U. Salcedo

More articles in Journal of Economics, Finance and Administrative Science from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().