Browsing by Subject "Zusammensetzung der Anteilseigner deutscher Aktiengesellschaften"

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Investors and investment behavior in Germany, 1869-1955
(2019) Neumayer, Andreas; Lehmann-Hasemeyer, Sibylle
The central purpose of this dissertation is to study investors characteristics, as well as investment decisions on the different German stock exchanges in the period 1869 to 1955. It offers three studies that reveal typical characteristics of investors and their investment behavior over time. Increasing our knowledge of investors and how they built expectations therefore crucially improves our understanding about the economic and political situation in Germany in the considered time period. The dataset is new and unique and includes information of more than 10,000 individual investors. The investors data are taken from archival resources containing lists of shareholders who attended a firms’ general assembly, shareholder books of different companies, portfolio choices over the lifetime of a single private banker and diary entries of individual investors. The first part of this dissertation presents a study of investors characteristics and the ownership structure of joint-stock firms for the period of 1869 to 1945. It is shown that after the hyperinflation of 1923, when shares became cheaper, the ownership share among lower social classes rose significantly. Moreover, with the rise of women rights after 1919, the number of shares owned by women also increased significantly. However, despite these shifts, the majority of shares remained in the hands of institutional investors and investors from the upper class. The second part analyzes investors’ expectations and investment decisions in regional stock exchanges in Germany from 1898 to 1934. The statistical analysis, which is based on shareholder lists attending general meetings first indicates that local investment was clearly important during this period. Then, challenging these findings and analyzing different sub-samples, suggests that investors’ home bias is potentially overestimated using this kind of source. In a supplementary exploration of so-called shareholder books, it is shown that the home bias phenomenon was indeed present. The bias towards local investments can to a large extent be explained by overall economic and political circumstances, the general performance of the market and the level of activity of the investor. The examination of portfolio choices over the period 1923 to 1955 of the private banker Joseph Frisch, in Stuttgart, shows that the preference for local shares was highest in times of insecurity, low returns and reduced investment activity. Furthermore, the analysis of diary entries of an investor from the late 19th century provides further insights into the investment behavior. The final part of this dissertation gives a general conclusion and a brief outlook about future research.