Institutional investors are factoring climate risks into their investment decisions. That’s the finding of a first-ever survey of institutional investors conducted in part by the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. From banks and insurers to pension and mutual funds, 97% of 439 respondents believe global temperatures are rising. More…

A new study shows that the central bank tool known as quantitative easing helped consumers substantially during the last big economic downturn — a finding with clear relevance for today’s pandemic-hit economy. More specifically, the study finds that one particular form of quantitative easing — in which the U.S. Federal Reserve purchased massive amounts of…

New research makes the case that ‘smoothing the numbers’ can be beneficial — if you have the right team in place to handle the job. Smoothing, in this case, means adjusting accounting reserves up or down. And contrary to the common wisdom that all earnings management is bad, researchers have identified a setting in which…

A researcher says a tiny tweak to how certain trades happen could make for more efficient stock markets, and it’s already being adopted by major players. The blink of an eye takes just a tenth of a second, but that’s an eternity in today’s stock markets, where automated transactions are calculated in millionths of seconds.…

Researchers have developed a ‘risk-aware’ model that improves the performance of cloud-computing infrastructure used across the globe. Inspired by those theories, MIT researchers in collaboration with Microsoft have developed a «risk-aware» mathematical model that could improve the performance of cloud-computing networks across the globe. Notably, cloud infrastructure is extremely expensive and consumes a lot of…

A new study has found that less-experienced investors are failing to diversify — and could be putting themselves at serious financial risk. The effect is so pronounced that many amateur investors would be better off choosing stocks at complete random. But a new study from the UBC Sauder School of Business has found that less…

Researchers describe a model for forecasting financials that uses only anonymized weekly credit card transactions and three-month earning reports. Tasked with predicting quarterly earnings of more than 30 companies, the model outperformed the combined estimates of expert Wall Street analysts on 57 percent of predictions. In finance, there’s growing interest in using imprecise but frequently…

A new paper sheds light on the higher-order architecture of financial systems and allow analysts to identify systemic risks like market bubbles or crashes. With the recent rush of small investors into so-called meme stocks and reemerging interest in cryptocurrencies talk of market instability, rising volatility, and bursting bubbles is surging. However, «traditional economic theories…

New research shows that selecting a targeted retirement fund that ends in a zero could negatively impact your retirement savings. The study identified a »zero bias» or tendency for individuals to select retirement funds ending in zero, which affects the amount people contribute to retirement savings and leads to an investment portfolio with an incompatible…

A new study finds that the technical interviews currently used in hiring for many software engineering positions test whether a job candidate has performance anxiety rather than whether the candidate is competent at coding. The interviews may also be used to exclude groups or favor specific job candidates. «Technical interviews are feared and hated in…