Denis Davydov

Using proprietary account-level data on more than 700,000 Swedish retail investors, we examine custodial investment accounts opened for children and explore their influence and implications once children grow up. We find that gender differences in risk-taking behavior in these accounts are limited in early childhood, but a significant change occurs during adolescence, when accounts held for boys become more active and volatile and deliver weaker risk-adjusted performance than those held for girls. More importantly, we document that having an investment account opened during childhood is associated with more favorable outcomes in adulthood. Investors whose accounts were opened in childhood earn higher risk-adjusted returns and show weaker overconfidence-related trading than their peers. The gender gap in risk-taking is also narrower among these investors. These findings indicate that custodial accounts opened for children could have a long-term influence on their financial attitudes and investment outcomes in adulthood.

Geopolitical conflicts force multinational enterprises to make difficult choices between protecting their operations in a host country and preserving their standing among stakeholders at home, even when formal sanctions do not require firms to exit. Whether to remain in a conflict-affected market is also often an ethical decision. Using panel data on more than 8,000 listed European firms from 2010 to 2024, we compare corporate outcomes following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We find that the 2014 shock produced little change in operating performance and modest deleveraging among firms with a Russian market presence, compared to those without. After 2022, firms that remained in Russia experienced stronger sales and employment growth than firms that completed their exit, without corresponding improvements in profitability or changes in leverage. Stayers experienced a larger post-2022 increase in media-based ethical scrutiny, whereas firms that completed their exit experienced a larger increase in idiosyncratic volatility. These findings suggest that corporate decisions to withdraw from an aggressor state are not necessarily associated with a consolidated profitability penalty, while decisions to stay may entail greater ethical scrutiny.

We examine the interaction between money market mutual fund (MMMF) flows, bank deposits, and bank lending using quarterly U.S. bank-level data from 2010–2023. We find that MMMFs and bank deposits are economically meaningful substitutes: a 10% increase in MMMF flows is associated with a 0.76% decline in bank deposits, driven by Government and Treasury funds, while tax-exempt and prime funds act as complements. Deposit substitution is associated with lower commercial real estate, residential, and consumer lending, particularly among smaller banks. Results are robust to interest-rate-level environment, IV-specifications, and county-level tests, with the floating-NAV reform providing quasi-experimental support for the funding-channel mechanism.

This paper examines the effect of executive board gender diversity on the relationship between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and bank liquidity hoarding (LH). We focus on the Russian banking sector, which, relative to most of the world, has a high share of women on bank executive boards. Using the news‐based EPU index developed by Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2016) and LH measures proposed by Berger, Guedhami, Kim, and Li (2022), we exploit a unique dataset from the Russian banking sector. While higher economic policy uncertainty tends to increase liquidity hoarding, we find that this effect diminishes as the gender diversity of the board increases. We attribute this finding to the moderating influence of gender diversity on stability and overreaction in decision‐making. Additionally, we find that the channel through which board gender diversity affects the impact of economic policy uncertainty on liquidity hoarding takes place via the hoarding of liquid assets. Our findings are robust to the use of alternative measures for economic policy uncertainty and gender diversity and hold after addressing endogeneity concerns. As women are still significantly under‐represented on bank boards in most countries, these results argue for policies to promote gender diversity on bank boards as a means of limiting the detrimental effects of economic policy uncertainty.

A more accurate characterization of the sources and sinks of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) in the vulnerable Arctic environment is required to better predict climate change. A large-scale aircraft campaign took place in September 2020 focusing on Siberian coast. CH4 and CO2 were measured in situ during the campaign and form the core of the study. Measured ozone (O3) and carbon monoxide (CO) are used here as tracers. Compared to the reference (i.e., the seasonal value at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, US), median CH4 mixing ratios are fairly higher (1890-1969 ppb vs 1887 ppb) while CO2 mixing ratios from all flights are lower (408.09-411.50 ppm vs 411.52 ppm). We also report on 3 case studies. Our analysis suggests that during the campaign the European part of Russia’s Arctic and Western Siberia were subject to long-range transport of polluted air masses, while the East mainly was under the influence of local emission of greenhouse gases. The relative contributions of anthropogenic and natural sources of CH4 in Siberia are simulated using the Lagrangian model FLEXPART in order to identify dominant sources in the boundary layer and in the free troposphere. In western terrestrial flights, air masses composition is influenced by from wetlands and anthropogenic activities (waste management, the fossil fuel industry and to a lesser extent the agricultural sector), while in the East, emissions are dominated by freshwaters, wetlands, and the oceans, with an ambiguous contribution from likely anthropogenic sources related to fossil fuels. Our results generally highlight the importance of the contribution form freshwater and oceans emissions and, combined with the large uncertainties associated with them, suggest that the emission from these aquatic sources should receive more attention in Siberia.

The stratosphere and troposphere are the main layers that define a significant part of the atmospheric processes of our planet. They are demarcated by the tropopause - a layer that has a stable stratification and makes it difficult to exchange air between them. As a consequence, the composition of the air differs slightly in the stratosphere and troposphere. However, the tropopause is not a fully material impermeable surface and therefore the exchange of impurities between both layers occurs. Under the conditions of a changing climate, the composition of the air in the troposphere has also noticeably changed. Therefore, it is important to study the processes of air exchange between the troposphere and stratosphere in a warming climate, especially if we take into account that one of the proposed geoengineering methods assumes to affect climate-forming factors by means of spraying sulphate particles into the stratosphere.Here, we present the results of airborne measurements of the size distribution and chemical composition of aerosols carried out at the tropopause level and in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) using the 'Optik' Tu-134 aircraft laboratory as a research platform. For the analysis, we have chosen 14 flight segments when the aircraft crossed the tropopause, which level was determined by the temperature gradient (up to 2°C/ km). All the selected profiles of atmospheric constituents were measured over the Russian Arctic seas or coastal areas, since the tropopause in the northern latitudes is much lower than in the middle ones.Significant differences in the elemental composition of aerosol particles were revealed in the UTLS. Si was dominated in the composition of stratospheric particles, and Fe or Al in the tropospheric ones. The ionic composition of the LS aerosols was predominantly represented by sulfates (SO42-), while tropospheric ones by a group of different ions.The particle number size distributions (PNSD) in both UT and LS were dominated by the Aitken mode (20-50 nm). At the same time, there were some differences in PNSD – in the stratosphere, the distribution curve was shifted towards larger sizes that suggests the older age of particles measured there. It is also important to note that the nucleation mode particles (3–20 nm) were also detected during some flights in the lower stratosphere. This indicates that, despite the low humidity and the very low content of ammonia here, the processes of the new particle formation (NPF) in the stratosphere were taking place. Taking into account the dominance of SO42- in the ionic composition, one can be assumed that sulfuric acid played a dominant role in the lower stratospheric NPF.This work was supported by the grant of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (Agreement No 075-15-2021-934).

Aerosols play an important role in radiation processes in the atmosphere, as well as they have a significant impact on global and regional air quality. The process of the atmospheric nanoparticle formation starts from in situ conversion of condensable vapors. Then, the freshly formed nanometer-size clusters begin to grow due to the condensation of nucleating vapours on them and a self-coagulation as well, thus reaching the optically active size ranges. The relative contribution of the above mechanisms can be estimated by the chemical composition of size-segregated particles. Here, we present preliminary results of the analysis of aerosol samples characterizing the inorganic chemical composition of particles ranging from a few nm to 10 mm. The sampling was performed at Fonovaya Observatory (West Siberia) in October 2021 by means of the Model 125R Nano-MOUDI Impactor.The analysis showed that in the lowest size range (<10 nm), only five ions were detected: SO42-, Cl-, K+, Na+, H+. The growth of the nucleation mode particles to the size range of 60-100 nm was accompanied by increasing content of SO42-, Na+, H+ ions to 50, 37 and 13%, respectively, suggesting the condensation of H2SO4 vapours or the coagulation of particles contained mainly Na2SO4. A content of ammonium ions (NH4+) appeared to be significant only in the accumulation mode size range (0.1-1.0 mm). Nitrates (NO3-) were detected mainly in the Aitken mode particles and then their contribution increases in accumulation and coarse mode ranges.This work was supported by the RFBR grant No. 19-05-50024 (Microparticles in the atmosphere: formation and transformation in the atmospheric surface layer and in the free troposphere, radiation effects and impact on public health).

This paper uses textual analysis to examine how European corporations assess sanctions in their annual reports. Using observations from a panel of almost 11,500 corporate annual reports from 2014 to 2017, we document significant cross-country variation in how firms perceive Russia-related sanctions, even after controlling for many firm-level characteristics, sectoral differences, and time trends. The cross-country differences also remain for sentiments about sanctions and contexts in which sanctions are mentioned. We also examine the role of macroeconomic linkages in explaining these differences. We show that Russia’s inward and outward FDI stocks and high levels of imports and exports with Russia explain about half of the cross-country variation, leaving a nontrivial share of variation unexplained.

The correlation between the radon influx into the atmosphere and the formation of ions has been studied from the data of observations at the Fonovaya Observatory of Institute of Atmospheric Optics, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences. This correlation is shown to be stable in the period from October to January. In the other months, the correlation is disturbed. However, if the events of nucleation and lightning discharges are removed from the data set, then the correlation is kept throughout the year.