Estimating investor preferences towards portfolio return distribution in investment funds

Authors

  • Margareta Gardijan Faculty of Economics and Business – Zagreb
  • Tihana Škrinjarić Faculty of Economics and Business – Zagreb

Abstract

Recent research in the field of investor preference has emphasised the need to go beyond just simply analyzing the first two moments of a portfolio return distributionused in a MV (mean-variance) paradigm. The suggestion is to observe an investor'sutility function as an nth order Taylor approximation. In such terms, the assumption is that investors prefer greater values of odd and smaller values of even moments. In order to investigate the preferences of Croatian investment funds, an analysis of the moments of their return distribution is conducted. The sample contains data on monthly returnsof 30 investment funds in Croatia for the period from January 1999 to May 2014. Usingthe theoretical utility functions (DARA, CARA, CRRA), we compare changes in theirpreferences when higher moments are included. Moreover, we investigate an extension of the CAPM model in order to find out whether including higher moments can explain better the relationship between the awards and risk premium, and whether we can applythese findings to estimate preferences of Croatian institutional investors. The results indicate that Croatian institutional investors do not seek compensation for bearinggreater market risk.

Author Biographies

Margareta Gardijan, Faculty of Economics and Business – Zagreb

Department of Mathematics, Research and teaching assistant

Tihana Škrinjarić, Faculty of Economics and Business – Zagreb

Department of Mathematics, Research and teaching assistant

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Published

2015-04-09

Issue

Volume 6 (2015), Number 1

Section

CRORR Journal Regular Issue

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