IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v39y2021ics1544612320303305.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Air pollution, local bias, and stock returns

Author

Listed:
  • Ding, Xiaoya
  • Guo, Mengmeng
  • Yang, Tao

Abstract

Building on research linking environmental factors to investors’ sentiments and the local bias literature, we posit that there is a negative relation between air pollution and a firm's stock return. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that firms located in cities that experience higher levels of air pollution exhibit lower stock returns. In line with our central hypothesis, we observe the air pollution effect is stronger among firms that are more likely to be held by local investors, such as younger firms, firms that have lower institutional ownership, and firms covered by fewer analysts.

Suggested Citation

  • Ding, Xiaoya & Guo, Mengmeng & Yang, Tao, 2021. "Air pollution, local bias, and stock returns," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 39(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:39:y:2021:i:c:s1544612320303305
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2020.101576
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612320303305
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2020.101576?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lam, Swee-Sum & Du, Jing, 2004. "Information asymmetry and estimation risk: Preliminary evidence from Chinese equity markets," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 311-331, June.
    2. Zoran Ivković & Scott Weisbenner, 2005. "Local Does as Local Is: Information Content of the Geography of Individual Investors' Common Stock Investments," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 267-306, February.
    3. Lisa A. Kramer & Mark J. Kamstra & Maurice D. Levi, 2000. "Losing Sleep at the Market: The Daylight Saving Anomaly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 1005-1011, September.
    4. William N. Goetzmann & Dasol Kim & Alok Kumar & Qin Wang, 2015. "Weather-Induced Mood, Institutional Investors, and Stock Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(1), pages 73-111.
    5. Joshua D. Coval & Tobias J. Moskowitz, 1999. "Home Bias at Home: Local Equity Preference in Domestic Portfolios," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 2045-2073, December.
    6. David Hirshleifer & Tyler Shumway, 2003. "Good Day Sunshine: Stock Returns and the Weather," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(3), pages 1009-1032, June.
    7. Joshua D. Coval & Tobias J. Moskowitz, 2001. "The Geography of Investment: Informed Trading and Asset Prices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(4), pages 811-841, August.
    8. Su, Dongwei, 2004. "Adverse-selection versus signaling: evidence from the pricing of Chinese IPOs," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 1-19.
    9. Jacobsen, Ben & Marquering, Wessel, 2008. "Is it the weather?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 526-540, April.
    10. Saunders, Edward M, Jr, 1993. "Stock Prices and Wall Street Weather," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1337-1345, December.
    11. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:5:p:2117-2144 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Huang, Yuqin & Qiu, Huiyan & Wu, Zhiguo, 2016. "Local bias in investor attention: Evidence from China's Internet stock message boards," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(PA), pages 338-354.
    13. Lepori, Gabriele M., 2016. "Air pollution and stock returns: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 25-42.
    14. Mark J. Kamstra & Lisa A. Kramer & Maurice D. Levi, 2003. "Winter Blues: A SAD Stock Market Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 324-343, March.
    15. Levy, Tamir & Yagil, Joseph, 2011. "Air pollution and stock returns in the US," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 374-383, June.
    16. Tan, Lin & Chiang, Thomas C. & Mason, Joseph R. & Nelling, Edward, 2008. "Herding behavior in Chinese stock markets: An examination of A and B shares," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 16(1-2), pages 61-77, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Su, Yuandong & Lu, Xinjie & Zeng, Qing & Huang, Dengshi, 2022. "Good air quality and stock market returns," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    2. Guo, Liwen & Cheng, Zhiming & Tani, Massimiliano & Cook, Sarah & Zhao, Jiaqi & Chen, Xi, 2022. "Air Pollution and Entrepreneurship," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1196, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    3. Jiang, Dequan & Li, Weiping & Shen, Yongjian & Yu, Shuangli, 2022. "Does air pollution affect earnings management? Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    4. Guo, Mengmeng & Wei, Mengxin & Huang, Lin, 2022. "Does air pollution influence investor trading behavior? Evidence from China," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    5. Guo, Lei & Han, Xing & Li, Youwei, 2023. "The smog that hovers: Air pollution and asset prices," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    6. Hu, Zhenyu & Chang, Jui-Chin, 2022. "Does air pollution affect dividend policy," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    7. Jiang, Dequan & Li, Weiping & Shen, Yongjian & Zhang, Ying, 2022. "Does air quality affect firms’ investment efficiency? Evidence from China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-17.
    8. Shen, Lihua & Lu, Xinjie & Luu Duc Huynh, Toan & Liang, Chao, 2023. "Air quality index and the Chinese stock market volatility: Evidence from both market and sector indices," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 224-239.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wu, Qinqin & Hao, Ying & Lu, Jing, 2018. "Air pollution, stock returns, and trading activities in China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 342-365.
    2. Wu, Qinqin & Chou, Robin K. & Lu, Jing, 2020. "How does air pollution-induced fund-manager mood affect stock markets in China?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(C).
    3. Kirk-Reeve, Samuel & Gehricke, Sebastian A. & Ruan, Xinfeng & Zhang, Jin E., 2021. "National air pollution and the cross-section of stock returns in China," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C).
    4. Xu, Alan, 2022. "Air pollution and mediation effects in stock market, longitudinal evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    5. Guo, Mengmeng & Wei, Mengxin & Huang, Lin, 2022. "Does air pollution influence investor trading behavior? Evidence from China," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    6. Chi, Yeguang & He, Jingbin & Ma, Xinru & Wu, Fei, 2023. "Air pollution and institutional investors' valuation bias during initial public offerings," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    7. Abudy, Menachem (Meni) & Mugerman, Yevgeny & Shust, Efrat, 2022. "The Winner Takes It All: Investor Sentiment and the Eurovision Song Contest," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    8. Dong, Rui & Fisman, Raymond & Wang, Yongxiang & Xu, Nianhang, 2021. "Air pollution, affect, and forecasting bias: Evidence from Chinese financial analysts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(3), pages 971-984.
    9. Michael Nofer & Oliver Hinz, 2015. "Using Twitter to Predict the Stock Market," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 57(4), pages 229-242, August.
    10. Jiawen Luo & Qun Zhang, 2024. "Air pollution, weather factors, and realized volatility forecasts of agricultural commodity futures," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 44(2), pages 151-217, February.
    11. Aigbe Akhigbe & Melinda Newman & Ann Marie Whyte, 2022. "Localized sentiment trading in heterogeneous labor markets: evidence from free agent signings," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 58(3), pages 1249-1276, April.
    12. Qadan, Mahmoud & Kliger, Doron, 2016. "The short trading day anomaly," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(PA), pages 62-80.
    13. Chang, Shao-Chi & Chen, Sheng-Syan & Chou, Robin K. & Lin, Yueh-Hsiang, 2012. "Local sports sentiment and returns of locally headquartered stocks: A firm-level analysis," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 309-318.
    14. Matthew Muntifering, 2021. "Air pollution, investor sentiment and excessive returns," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 22(2), pages 110-119, March.
    15. Kliger, Doron & Qadan, Mahmoud, 2019. "The High Holidays: Psychological mechanisms of honesty in real-life financial decisions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 121-137.
    16. Wu, Qinin & Lu, Jing, 2020. "Air pollution, individual investors, and stock pricing in China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 267-287.
    17. Levy, Tamir & Yagil, Joseph, 2011. "Air pollution and stock returns in the US," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 374-383, June.
    18. Kang, Sang Hoon & Jiang, Zhuhua & Lee, Yeonjeong & Yoon, Seong-Min, 2010. "Weather effects on the returns and volatility of the Shanghai stock market," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(1), pages 91-99.
    19. Jochen M. Schmittmann & Jenny Pirschel & Steffen Meyer & Andreas Hackethal, 2015. "The Impact of Weather on German Retail Investors," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 19(3), pages 1143-1183.
    20. Qadan, Mahmoud & Nama, Hazar, 2018. "Investor sentiment and the price of oil," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 42-58.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:39:y:2021:i:c:s1544612320303305. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/frl .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.