Mutual fund managers can outperform the market by picking stocks or timing the market successfully. Previous work has … picking skills and little evidence of timing skills among successful managers. This paper estimates skill separately in booms … and recessions and finds that the extent to which managers focus on stock picking or market timing fluctuates with the …

The question of whether and how mutual fund managers provide valuable services for their clients motivates one of the … evidence that some investment managers have skill and that attention is allocated rationally …