Binam Ghimire

@rgu.ac.uk

Associate Professor, Accounting and Finance, Aberdeen Business School
Robert Gordon University



                             

https://researchid.co/binamghimire

RESEARCH, TEACHING, or OTHER INTERESTS

Economics, Econometrics and Finance, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment, Modeling and Simulation, Pollution

11

Scopus Publications

796

Scholar Citations

11

Scholar h-index

14

Scholar i10-index

Scopus Publications

  • Does it pay to be employee-owned? On the performance of knowledge-intensive firms
    Binam Ghimire
    Emerald
    PurposeThis paper aims to examine the stock market performance of knowledge-intensive employee-owned firms.Design/methodology/approachIt constructs a portfolio comprising stocks of employee-owned wealth management companies listed in the UK Employee Ownership Index. A simple equal-weighted portfolio simulation strategy with annual rebalancing is employed and returns are analysed for the period 01.2002–12.2015.FindingsThe employee-owned firms consistently generate significantly higher returns, averaging 13% per annum. During favourable market conditions, the returns are even more significant at 16.40% higher than the market average annual returns. The outperformance persists in single-year and five-year investment periods, full and sub-sample periods, including bullish, stable and challenging economic times and even at high transaction costs and zero dividends. This superior performance is linked to a positive feedback loop created by homogeneous knowledge-workers who are incentivised to perform better in employee-owned business setting through participative decision-making and exhibiting risk aversion skills.Practical implicationsAdoption of the employee ownership model of running a business can be highly rewarding within knowledge-intensive firms. This study emphasises the need for a comprehensive database of employee-owned companies, which is currently lacking in the UK.Originality/valueNo prior study could be found to have studied the relationship between employee-owned knowledge-intensive firms and their stock market performance.

  • When Bitcoin is high: cryptocurrency value, illicit markets and US marijuana bills
    Savva Shanaev, Efan Johnson, Mikhail Vasenin, Humnath Panta, and Binam Ghimire
    Emerald
    Purpose The purpose of this paper is to estimate the implications of illicit market use for the value of Bitcoin in an event studies framework. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a data set of 58 state-level marijuana decriminalisation and legalisation bills and referenda in the USA in 2010–2022. Findings Decriminalisation is associated with a strong and consistent positive Bitcoin price response around the event, recreational legalisation induces a more ambiguous reaction and medical legalisation is found to have a negative albeit small impact on Bitcoin value. This suggests decriminalisation enhances shadow economy use value of Bitcoin, whereas recreational and medical legalisation are not consistently reducing illicit drug cryptomarket activity. The effects are robust to various estimation windows, in subsamples, and also when outliers, heavy tails, conditional heteroskedasticity and state size are accounted for. Originality/value New to the literature, the choice of US marijuana bills, specifically as sample events, is based on both theoretical and empirical grounds.

  • Analyst herding—whether, why, and when? Two new tests for herding detection in target forecast prices
    Binam Ghimire, Callum Reveley, Savva Shanaev, and Humnath Panta
    Poznan University of Economics
    This study proposes two novel tests for security analyst herding based on binomial correlation and forecast error volatility scaling and applies it to investigate herding patterns in analyst target prices in 2008-2020 in the UK. Analysts robustly herd in their valuations, with results consistent across years, sectors, in panel fixed effect, quantile, instrumental variable regressions, and when controlled for optimism and conservatism. Herding becomes prominent for stocks followed by at least five analysts and towards the long sides of Fama-French sorts, reinforcing its non-spurious and behavioral nature. Analyst herd more strongly subject to low volatility and uncertainty.



  • Effects of official versus online review ratings
    Binam Ghimire, Savva Shanaev, and Zhibin Lin
    Elsevier BV

  • Efficient scholars: academic attention and the disappearance of anomalies
    Savva Shanaev and Binam Ghimire
    Informa UK Limited
    This study examines the dynamics of ten most notable stock market anomalies through 1926–2018 and assesses the joint impact of academic attention, post-publication decay, data-snooping bias, institutional trading, and time trend on their disappearance. It proposes new and simple measures of academic attention attracted by stock market anomalies using the number of articles published on the relevant topic available via Google Scholar or respective citation counts. The study finds that academic attention is the most dominant factor explaining the diminishing abnormal returns of anomaly-exploiting strategies. The approach developed by this study can also be useful in determining whether a stock return regularity is a behavioural anomaly or a systematic risk factor.

  • Children’s toy or grown-ups’ gamble? LEGO sets as an alternative investment
    Savva Shanaev, Nikita Shimkus, Binam Ghimire, and Satish Sharma
    Emerald
    Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study LEGO sets as a potential alternative asset class. An exhaustive sample of 10,588 sets is used to generate inferences regarding long-term LEGO performance, its diversification benefits and return determinants. Design/methodology/approach LEGO set performance is studied in terms of equal- and value-weighted portfolios, sorts based on set characteristics and cross-sectional regressions. Findings Over 1966–2018, LEGO value-weighted index accounted for survivorship bias enjoys 1.20% inflation-adjusted return per annum, well below 5.54% for equities. However, the defensive properties of LEGO are considerable, as including 5%–25% of LEGO in a diversified portfolio is beneficial for investors with varying levels of risk aversion. LEGO secondary market is relatively internationalised, with investors from larger economies, countries with higher per capita incomes and less income inequality are shown to trade LEGO more actively. Practical implications LEGO investors derive non-pecuniary utility that is separable from their risk-return profile. LEGO is not exposed to any of the Fama-French factors, however, set-specific size and value effects are also well-pronounced on the LEGO market, with smaller sets and sets with lower price-to-piece ratio exhibiting higher yields. Older sets are also enjoying higher returns, demonstrating a liquidity effect. Originality/value This is the first study to investigate the investment properties of LEGO as an alternative asset class from micro- and macro-financial perspectives that overcomes many survivorship bias limitations prevalent in earlier research. LEGO trading is shown to be an important source of valuable data to enable original robustness checks for prominent theoretical concepts from asset pricing and behavioural finance literature.

  • Taming the blockchain beast? Regulatory implications for the cryptocurrency Market
    Savva Shanaev, Satish Sharma, Binam Ghimire, and Arina Shuraeva
    Elsevier BV


  • Socially responsible investment and market performance: The case of energy and resource companies
    Janusz Brzeszczynski, Binam Ghimire, Tooraj Jamasb, and Graham McIntosh
    International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE)
    Energy and resource companies have a crucial role in achieving future sustainable economies. We investigate the performance of international Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) energy and resource companies on the stock market over a 10-year period (February 2005-January 2015). We select portfolios of established energy and resource stocks with substantial environmental and social responsibility activities. Our findings demonstrate that the annual average performance of the energy and resource SRI portfolio was superior to returns of different benchmark indices. The energy and resource SRI stock investments were also more profitable on the risk-adjusted basis. Additionally, we applied Fama-French and Carhart four factor models and found that the returns of our portfolios are more consistently explained by the market factor than by other factors. We also show that oil price has a statistically significant influence on the returns of the SRI energy and resource stocks. However, the performance of the energy and resource SRI portfolio was no longer superior when dividends were excluded from the calculation of total returns. Indeed, the performance of portfolios without dividends was poor compared to the benchmark indices in most sub-periods, in the sub-samples of bullish and bearish markets and in the full sample. This finding demonstrates the importance of dividends in the investment performance of the energy and resource SRI stocks.

RECENT SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS

  • Does it pay to be employee-owned? On the performance of knowledge-intensive firms
    B Ghimire
    Employee Relations: The International Journal 2025

  • Trade vs. tradition: Decoding cultural distance and its impact on China's international trade
    B Yu, X Zhong, B Ghimire, N Sapkota
    Available at SSRN 5126872 2025

  • A Divergent Valuation Model for the Make-or-Buy Decision on Investments in Disruptive FinTech Innovation: An Incumbents’ Approach
    J Tranche, B Ghimire
    Available at SSRN 5112702 2025

  • When Bitcoin is high: cryptocurrency value, illicit markets and US marijuana bills
    S Shanaev, E Johnson, M Vasenin, H Panta, B Ghimire
    Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance 32 (4), 501-515 2024

  • Analyst herding-whether, why, and when? Two new tests for herding detection in target forecast prices.
    C Reveley, S Shanaev, Y Bin, H Panta, B Ghimire
    Economics and business review 9 (4) 2023

  • Self-control and job-seeking behaviors among Nepalese Fresh Graduates
    SP Joshi, RK Dahal, B Ghimire, D Karki
    Hong Kong Journal of Social Sciences 61 (2023), 826-836 2023

  • A generalised seasonality test and applications for cryptocurrency and stock market seasonality
    S Shanaev, B Ghimire
    The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 86, 172-185 2022

  • When ESG meets AAA: The effect of ESG rating changes on stock returns
    S Shanaev, B Ghimire
    Finance Research Letters 46, 102302 2022

  • Effects of official versus online review ratings
    B Ghimire, S Shanaev, Z Lin
    Annals of Tourism Research 92, 103247 2022

  • A fitting return to fitting returns: cryptocurrency distributions revisited.
    S Shanaev, B Ghimire
     2021

  • Efficient scholars: academic attention and the disappearance of anomalies
    S Shanaev, B Ghimire
    The European Journal of Finance 27 (3), 278-304 2021

  • Children’s toy or grown-ups’ gamble? LEGO sets as an alternative investment
    S Shanaev, N Shimkus, B Ghimire, S Sharma
    The Journal of Risk Finance 21 (5), 577-620 2020

  • Market Reaction to CEO Turnover: Empirical Evidence from Fortune 500 Firms
    D Karki, B Ghimire
    Global Finance Review 2 (1), 615 2020

  • A generalised seasonality test and applications for stock market seasonality.
    S Shanaev, B Ghimire
     2020

  • To float or to sink? Revisiting the causal effects of exchange rate regimes.
    A Shuraeva, S Shanaev, B Ghimire
     2020

  • The financial pandemic: COVID-19 and policy interventions on rational and irrational markets
    S Shanaev, A Shuraeva, B Ghimire
    Available at SSRN 3589557 2020

  • Taming the blockchain beast? Regulatory implications for the cryptocurrency Market
    S Shanaev, S Sharma, B Ghimire, A Shuraeva
    Research in International Business and Finance 51, 101080 2020

  • Children’s Toy or Grown-Ups’ Gamble? LEGO Sets as an Alternative Investment
    N Shimkus, S Shanaev, S Sharma, B Ghimire
    LEGO Sets as an Alternative Investment (September 20, 2019) 2019

  • Socially responsible investment and market performance: The case of energy and resource companies
    J Brzeszczyński, B Ghimire, T Jamasb, G McIntosh
    The Energy Journal 40 (5), 17-72 2019

  • The marginal cost of mining, Metcalfe's law and cryptocurrency value formation: causal inferences from the instrumental variable approach.
    S Shanaev, S Sharma, A Shuraeva, B Ghimire
     2019

MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS

  • When ESG meets AAA: The effect of ESG rating changes on stock returns
    S Shanaev, B Ghimire
    Finance Research Letters 46, 102302 2022
    Citations: 223

  • Taming the blockchain beast? Regulatory implications for the cryptocurrency Market
    S Shanaev, S Sharma, B Ghimire, A Shuraeva
    Research in International Business and Finance 51, 101080 2020
    Citations: 168

  • An empirical investigation of Ivorian SMEs access to bank finance: constraining factors at demand-level.
    B Ghimire, R Abo
    Journal of finance and investment analysis 2 (4) 2013
    Citations: 71

  • Is all politics local? Regional political risk in Russia and the panel of stock returns
    S Shanaev, B Ghimire
    Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance 21, 70-82 2019
    Citations: 70

  • The financial pandemic: COVID-19 and policy interventions on rational and irrational markets
    S Shanaev, A Shuraeva, B Ghimire
    Available at SSRN 3589557 2020
    Citations: 63

  • Socially responsible investment and market performance: The case of energy and resource companies
    J Brzeszczyński, B Ghimire, T Jamasb, G McIntosh
    The Energy Journal 40 (5), 17-72 2019
    Citations: 30

  • Self-control and job-seeking behaviors among Nepalese Fresh Graduates
    SP Joshi, RK Dahal, B Ghimire, D Karki
    Hong Kong Journal of Social Sciences 61 (2023), 826-836 2023
    Citations: 26

  • Efficient scholars: academic attention and the disappearance of anomalies
    S Shanaev, B Ghimire
    The European Journal of Finance 27 (3), 278-304 2021
    Citations: 20

  • Effects of official versus online review ratings
    B Ghimire, S Shanaev, Z Lin
    Annals of Tourism Research 92, 103247 2022
    Citations: 17

  • A generalised seasonality test and applications for cryptocurrency and stock market seasonality
    S Shanaev, B Ghimire
    The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance 86, 172-185 2022
    Citations: 14

  • Puzzles in the relationship between financial development and economic growth.
    B Ghimire, G Giorgioni
    Journal of applied finance and banking 3 (5) 2013
    Citations: 13

  • Finance and growth: an investigation into the role of internal, bank and equity finance
    B Ghimire, G Giorgioni
    Economics and Business Review 13 (2), 31-46 2013
    Citations: 11

  • A fitting return to fitting returns: cryptocurrency distributions revisited.
    S Shanaev, B Ghimire
     2021
    Citations: 10

  • The marginal cost of mining, Metcalfe's law and cryptocurrency value formation: causal inferences from the instrumental variable approach.
    S Shanaev, S Sharma, A Shuraeva, B Ghimire
     2019
    Citations: 10

  • Children’s toy or grown-ups’ gamble? LEGO sets as an alternative investment
    S Shanaev, N Shimkus, B Ghimire, S Sharma
    The Journal of Risk Finance 21 (5), 577-620 2020
    Citations: 8

  • Puzzles in financial development and economic growth
    B Ghimire, G Giorgioni
    Liverpool Business School, Liverpool John Moores University, John Foster 2009
    Citations: 8

  • Credit sector reform and NRB
    BR Ghimire
    New Business Age, 47-49 2003
    Citations: 7

  • Explaining stock returns in Nepal: application of single and multi-factor models.
    D Karki, B Ghimire
    Journal of finance and investment analysis 5 (3) 2016
    Citations: 6

  • Systematic risk determinants of stock returns after financial crisis: Evidence from United Kingdom
    VQ Trinh, D Karki, B Ghimire
    Journal of Finance and Investment Analysis 5 (1), 1-28 2016
    Citations: 5

  • Socially responsible investment and market performance: The case of energy and resource firms
    J Brzeszczynski, B Ghimire, T Jamasb, G McIntosh
    Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of 2016
    Citations: 3

Industry, Institute, or Organisation Collaboration

Qatar University