Gendered expectations for gendered companies: the effect of the grammatical gender of company names on the stock price momentum of Latin American and Spanish stocks
Liu, Xi
Loading…
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/97498
Description
Title
Gendered expectations for gendered companies: the effect of the grammatical gender of company names on the stock price momentum of Latin American and Spanish stocks
Author(s)
Liu, Xi
Issue Date
2017-04-26
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Cohen, Dov
Committee Member(s)
Cheng, Joey
Department of Study
Psychology
Discipline
Psychology
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Level
Thesis
Keyword(s)
Gender stereotype
Language
Abstract
In this archival study we used real historical stock prices to examine the hypothesis that grammatical gender assignments of a company’s name passes gender stereotypes onto the company itself, and consequently changes investors’ expectation of the stock performance. We gathered historical stock price data from Spanish speaking countries, and compared average momentum (the expectation that the current price trend will continue. i.e. what went up will keep going up, and what went down will keep going down) among the companies with masculine names, feminine names, and gender ambiguous/neutral names. We calculated momentum utilizing different lengths of observation and holding time, as well as different calculation frequencies (by days and by months) to test for robustness of the result. Across different strategies, masculine-named companies consistently display higher momentum than feminine-named companies. Moreover, disaggregating the momentum into momentums during upward trends (momentumbuy) and downward trends (momentumshort) indicates that the observed momentum return results mostly from buying past rising stocks, rather than shorting past falling stocks. Gender differences are not evident in momentumshort. Implications for the effect of grammatical gender in high-stakes situations, and future directions are discussed.
Use this login method if you
don't
have an
@illinois.edu
email address.
(Oops, I do have one)
IDEALS migrated to a new platform on June 23, 2022. If you created
your account prior to this date, you will have to reset your password
using the forgot-password link below.
