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PurposeIn the European Union, the Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities Directive (UCITS IV) requires fund management companies to provide a Key Investor Information Document (UCITS KIID) for investors. This papers uses archival data from the Finnish mutual fund market to test how the regulation's information disclosure requirements concerning past performance, risk and fund fees are associated with mutual fund flows.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses archival data on the mutual funds market in Finland to test how the regulation relating to retail investors' information requirements is associated with mutual fund flows.FindingsOur findings suggest that the UCITS KIID predicts retail investors' fund flows. While past performance is associated with fund flows throughout the observation period, retail investors appear to have become more sensitive to fund fees and invest in less risky funds following the adoption of the UCITS IV period.Practical implicationsInformation relating to fund fees and risk appears to be relevant to retail investors, which should be acknowledged in future iterations of short-form disclosure and in mutual fund marketing.Originality/valueThis paper is the first to assess the significance of KIID in actual market environment.

Introduction Extraversion and Conscientiousness are well-studied personality traits associated with reward processing and goal prioritization, respectively, and bear on individual differences in financial risk-taking. Using unique large datasets, we investigated the link between these traits and male online gamblers' actual betting participation and intensity. Method We combined datasets containing online horse betting data (during 2015-2016) from the Finnish monopoly betting company, administrative registry data from Statistics Finland, and personality trait measures from the Finnish Defence Forces corresponding to Extraversion and Conscientiousness as defined in the five-factor model. We modelled associations between these traits and betting participation (n = 471,968) and intensity (n = 11,217) among male horse bettors (age = 36-53). Results Controlling for demographics and IQ, individuals scoring high on Conscientiousness (or Extraversion) were less (or more) likely to bet and less (or more) intensive bettors-even when personality was measured 16-34 years before betting occurred. One SD personality score increase represented an annual decrease (Conscientiousness) or increase (Extraversion) of euro570-754 in spending. Conclusions Extraversion and Conscientiousness are implicated in real-life financial behavior with tangible consequences for individuals. These effects are stronger than for many known demographic variables used in gambling studies and persist up to 34 years after personality has been measured.

With the goal of achieving high barrier with bio-based materials, for example, for packaging applications, a series of novel furfural-based polyesters bearing sulfide-bridged difuran dicarboxylic acid units with high oxygen barrier properties were synthesized and characterized. For the novel poly(alkylene sulfanediyldifuranoate)s, a 11.2-1.9× higher barrier improvement factor compared to amorphous poly(ethylene terephthalate) was observed which places the novel polyesters in the top class among previously reported 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) and 2,2'-bifuran-based polyesters. Titanium-catalyzed polycondensation reactions between the novel synthesized monomer, dimethyl 5,5'-sulfanediyldi(furan-2-carboxylate), and four different diols, ethylene glycol, 1,3-propanediol, 1,4-butanediol, and 1,5-pentanediol, afforded difuran polyesters with high intrinsic viscosities (0.76-0.90 dL/g). These polyesters had good thermal stability, decomposing at 342-363 and 328-570 °C under nitrogen and air, respectively, which allowed processing them into free-standing films via melt-pressing. In tensile testing of the film specimens, tensile moduli in the range of 0.4-2.6 GPa were recorded, with higher values observed for the polyesters with shorter diol units. Interestingly, besides the low oxygen permeability, the renewable sulfide-bridged furan monomer also endowed the polyesters with slight UV shielding effect, with cutoff wavelengths of ca. 350 nm, in contrast to FDCA-based polyesters, which lack significant UV light absorption at over 300 nm.

This study examined how recent losses predict the frequency of play in online betting. Previous studies have suggested that players tend to decrease betting volume and consequently take on less risk after a losing session. We used a daily panel of actual gambling data and survival regression to investigate how incurring losses predicts the duration to the next betting day. Our main findings were that, after a losing betting day, a bettor typically abstained from betting for a 27% longer time than after a day he or she broke even. Further, we found that either untypically high wins or loses significantly predicted the amount of time to the next gambling event. This study adds to the gambling literature by presenting evidence on a reduction in betting activity following a losing session.

This study uses a simple metric to assess the degree of risk an individual player takes on while gambling. The player’s average potential gross win per bet placed captures both the amount of money ...

This paper introduces two statistical interval scale techniques for assessing preferential uncertainty in discrete choice problems. The main benefit of interval scale techniques is that the evaluations can be done by local best–worst scale so that there are concrete reference points defining the utility scale. However, since value measurement is based on the decision-makers’ subjective preferences, information is also subject to uncertainty. For example, decision-makers may have difficulties in evaluating certain alternatives or they are not necessarily consistent with their own pairwise evaluations. The proposed methods differ from previous interval scale methods in that also the decision-maker's uncertainty is evaluated. The advantage of the statistical approach is that it permits inconsistency in evaluations and can thus lead to more realistic description of the overall preferences when compared to deterministic approaches. Furthermore, the statistical approach permits the examination of the impacts of uncertainty on overall decision making.

The law of the one price (LOP) was examined in the main European markets for lightweight coated paper (LWC paper) and uncoated wood-free paper (office paper) using monthly data for the period 1992–2005. The study focused on whether floating and fixed exchange rates impacted on the uniformity of price linkages between the main markets. Bivariate cointegration analysis between 12 pairs of paper prices largely indicated uniform price behaviour between the UK, France and Germany in both commodity groups. Although there was slight indication of the extent of market integration becoming stronger after European currency union, our results were not able to strongly distinguish the floating and fixed exchange rate regimes. Despite the different end-use sectors of the LWC paper used by the publication industry and fine paper, which is dominantly for office use, the cointegration test results did not indicate behavioural differences between the two paper grades.