University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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

Content Files
LIU-THESIS-2017.pdf

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
Date of Ingest
2017-08-10T19:16:16Z
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.
Graduation Semester
2017-05
Type of Resource
text
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/97498
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2017 Xi Liu

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