Paun Cristian

BucharestUniversity of Economic Science

Department of International Business and Economics

RISK TOLERANCE ANALYSIS: ROMANIAN CASE BEFORE AND DURING FINANCIAL TURMOIL

Faculty of International Business and Economics

6, PiataRomana, 1st district,

010374, Romania

 +4.021.319.19.00

E-mail:  cpaun@ase.ro

ABSTRACT. One of the most challenging problems of investment theory is to explain and to understand the risk behaviour of people interested in investing their savings on the stock exchange. The recent global financial crisis significantly affected public perception about the risks and had a direct impact on the transaction volume and type of operations performed on international capital markets. Risk tolerance is considered in crisis theories as one of the major factors inducing global contagion. Social aspects like gender, social status, level of income (wealth) are considered to be relevant for explaining risk tolerance. This research proposed a specific instrument used to test the level of risk aversion (inverse of risk tolerance) applied on the Romanian case in two different periods (before crisis and during crisis) and on a statistically relevant sample of respondents. Using specific tools (non-parametric and parametric instruments), the paper provides a closer insight on this specific problem, trying to explain the significance of different social aspects on the risk aversion level for different categories, but also to explain how the crisis affected this aversion.

Received: July, 2012

1st Revision: September, 2012

Accepted: October, 2012

JEL Classification: A13, G12, D53, D81, G01

Keywords: risk aversion, behavioural finance, optimal portfolio investments, capital market, investment criteria