Superstition and Financial Decision Making

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hirshleifer, David; Jian, Ming; Zhang, Huai
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Irvine; Nanyang Technological University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2016.2584
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 235-252
• 关键词: Asset pricing; information and market efficiency; international financial markets

摘要

In Chinese culture, certain digits are lucky and others unlucky. We test how such numerological superstition affects financial decision in the China initial public offering (IPO) market. We find that the frequency of lucky numerical stock listing codes exceeds what would be expected by chance. Also consistent with superstition effects, newly listed firms with lucky listing codes experience inferior post-IPO abnormal returns. Further tests suggest that our conclusions are not driven by endogeneity.