ICEF Research seminar

 
Date: Monday, June 28
Venue: HSE Pokrovsky bulvar, room Zh-822.
 
Paper 1:   
Quality of business forecasts of Russian managers: results of a longitudinal study
by Dmitry Storcheus and Alexis Belianin (ICEF)
 

Abstract: Common-sense economic wisdom suggests that good forecasting ability is one of the major virtues of a good manager, and an important component of business success. Nevertheless, extensive studies suggest that individual perceptions of uncertain events are subject to various 'heuristics and biases' whose origins are deeply rooted in the nature of human judgment. One of these is exaggeration of the quality of one's forecasting abilities, leading to overconfidence in one's beliefs and poor calibration of forecasts. Using a longitudinal survey of the Russian managers, we explore the effects of excessive confidence and poor calibration on firm performance and behaviour. One of the key findings is that firms whose managers are overconfident on average perform systematically better than those firm whose managers are not overconfident. We propose a theoretical explanation of optimal managerial overconfidence in terms of the theory of firm behaviour and discuss its implications using real data.

 
Paper 2:   
Do Locals Perform Better Than Foreigners: Evidence from Mutual Funds Investing in Russia
By Galina Smirnova and Carsten Sprenger (Sberbank; ICEF)
 

Abstract: The mutual fund industry has grown considerably over the last decade in Russia. A large literature in financial economics tests the hypothesis of financial market efficiency against the alternative hypothesis that mutual fund managers can systematically perform better than the market. There are only very few such studies for Russia. One particular question that we investigate is whether local or foreign fund managers of mutual fund investing in Russia are performing better. Both their capability of selection and their market timing are compared using a large database of equity, fixed-income and mixed funds investing in the Russian market.