LFU Department of Banking and Finance

28/01/2021

Two interesting intervies by Jürgen Huber and Michael Kirchler on the topic of Open Science (in German):

Jürgen Huber:
https://open-science-future.zbw.eu/open-science-oeffnet-viele-tueren/

Michael Kirchler:
https://open-science-future.zbw.eu/open-science-erfordert-und-foerdert-internationale-vernetzung/

04/09/2020

The paper "Delegated Investment Decisions and Rankings" has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Banking and Finance. It is co-authored by Michael Kirchler, Florian Lindner and Utz Weitzel.
The authors show that two aspects of social context are central to the finance industry. First, financial professionals usually make investment decisions on behalf of third parties. Second, social competition, in the form of performance rankings, is pervasive. Therefore, the authors investigate professionals’ risk-taking behavior under social competition when investing for others. The authors run online and lab-in-the-field experiments with 805 financial professionals and show that professionals increase their risk taking for others when they lag behind. Additional survey evidence from 1,349 respondents reveals that professionals’ preferences for high rankings are significantly stronger than those of the general population.
For further information, check the most recent working paper version:

04/09/2020

The paper “Financial literacy, economic preferences, and adolescents’ field behavior” has been published in Finance Research Letters.
It is co-authored by Michael Razen, Laura Hueber, Jürgen Huber, Michael Kirchler, and Matthias Stefan.
The authors show that Financial literacy and economic preferences are considered to be important drivers of health, income, and general well-being. The authors bridge the gap between studies on financial literacy and research on economic preferences by investigating how they interplay with each other and with the field behavior of adolescents. First, the authors report that financial literacy scores are positively associated with patience, male gender, and educational level of the father. Second, the authors observe that risky field behavior like smoking and gambling is positively associated with various measures of risk-tolerance, and negatively associated with patience. Finally, the authors discuss implications for financial education programs.

31/10/2019

Our BAFIT-partners Hypo Tirol and BTV Bank are currently looking for data scientists, sales controller, internal auditors, and support for their promotion team! Visit our homepage for further information.

In unserer regelmäßig gewarteten Jobbörse finden Sie Stellenausschreibungen unserer Partnerunternehmen. Jährlich erhalten wir so rund 150 Stellenausschreibungen für Praktika, Werkstudenstellen, Traineepositionen und Direkteinstiege, die wir gerne an unsere Studierenden weitergeben.

25/10/2019

Another Top Publication from our Experimental Finance Group

We are happy to announce that the paper "What drives risk perception? A global survey with financial professionals and lay people.", co-authored by Felix Holzmeister, Jürgen Huber, and Michael Kirchler from the Department of Banking and Finance, was accepted for publication at one of the leading general interest journals in management, i.e., Management Science.
For more information, click on the following link:

Risk is an integral part of many economic decisions, and is vitally important in finance. Despite extensiveresearch on decision-making under risk, little is known about how risks are actually perceived by financialprofessionals, the key players in global financial markets. In a large-scale survey ex...

09/07/2019

PROF of the YEAR 2019
Two of the winners are from our Department - Jürgen Huber was elected "Prof of the Year" and Michael Kirchler won the category "Rhetorics and Didactics"
Congratulations!
https://www.sowi-news.at/prof-of-the-year-2019/

19/06/2019

Last weekend we took part in the Science Festival hosted by the University of Innsbruck in connection to its 350-year anniversary. We were proud and honoured that our special research unit (SFB) was selected to curate one of the 9 containers in the Universitätsstrasse, representing the major research areas at the University. In total, we ran approximately 800-900 experiments, resulting in 100 decisions taken by the visitors per hour. Moreover, we gave feedback plus implications on the different tasks to each individual visitor (e.g., prisoners dilemma, trust game, experiment on loss and risk attitudes, ultimatum game testing fairness preferences). Feedback from the audience was overwhelmingly positive and, even though the container was run with up to 6 instructors, we were overrun.
Special thank goes to all that helped in setting up the show, particularly to Alexandra Baier, Helena Fornwagner, Felix Holzmeister, Rene Schwaiger and to Tobias Haller and Michael Kirchler as the main organizers.

11/06/2019

Congratulations - another Top-3 publication by members of our team

We are proud to inform you that a paper on "Bubbles and Financial Professionals" by four members of our team - Jürgen Huber, Christoph Huber, Michael Kirchler, and Julia Rose - got accepted for publication in one of the Top-3 Finance Journals worldwide, the Review of Financial Studies (together with Utz Weitzel from VU Amsterdam and Florian Lindner from the MPI in Bonn).

Here is the abstract of the paper:
The efficiency of financial markets, but also their potential to produce bubbles are central topics in academic and professional debates. Yet, little is known about the contribution of financial professionals to price efficiency. We run 116 experimental markets with 412 professionals and 502 students. We find that professional markets with bubble-drivers
-- capital inflows or high initial capital supply -- are susceptible to bubbles, although they are more efficient than student markets. In mixed markets with students, bubbles also occur, but professionals act as price stabilizers. We show that heterogeneous price beliefs drive overpricing, especially in bubble-prone market environments.

For further details, go to the latest working paper version of the paper viahttps://www2.uibk.ac.at/downloads/c4041030/wpaper/2018-04.pdf

11/06/2019

Still looking for a job after graduation or an internship during the summer? Many vacancies are awaiting you at our partner firms!

In unserer regelmäßig gewarteten Jobbörse finden Sie Stellenausschreibungen unserer Partnerunternehmen. Jährlich erhalten wir so rund 150 Stellenausschreibungen für Praktika, Werkstudenstellen, Traineepositionen und Direkteinstiege, die wir gerne an unsere Studierenden weitergeben.

24/05/2019

Bus stop curated by the Department of Banking and Finance

As part of the 350 years anniversary of the University of Innsbruck, 19 bus stations across the city have been re-designed by researchers from different faculties, transporting scientific insights. Three members of our department (Tobias Haller, Michael Kirchler, and Rene Schwaiger) have curated one bus stop in the Museumsstraße and focus on the question "What is fair?"

In addition to some information at the bus stop itself, there is online content (https://www.uibk.ac.at/350-jahre/veranstaltungen/ausstellungen/haltestelleninstallation-frau-hitt/frage-8.html.de), an interactive part about wealth distribution in Austria (http://uibk350.before.world/) and an information document containing some scientific insights into economic inequality (https://www.dropbox.com/s/kbt0sqabyljzjd7/Info_%C3%96konomische_Ungleichheit.pdf?dl=0).

Enjoy the read!

03/05/2019

Auch dieses Jahr wurde der Graf Chotek Hochschulpreis der Tiroler Sparkasse wieder für eine Abschlussarbeit vergeben, die an unserem Institut betreut wurde. IWW-Absolventin Julia Kraus gewann den mit 2000 € dotierten Hauptpreis für ihre Diplomarbeit zum Thema "Mutual Fund Performance - An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Active Management". Herzlichen Glückwünsch!

Insgesamt 54 Absolventen von Uni, MCI und UMIT nahmen am Graf Chotek Hochschulpreis 2019 der Tiroler Sparkasse teil. Der Hauptpreis des mit insgesamt 5.000 Euro dotierten Jungakademikerpreises geht an Julia Katharina Kraus, Absolventin unseres Studienprogramms IWW, für ihre Diplomarbeit zur Perform...