Mutual fund families are increasingly assigning traders to manage corporate bond mutual funds. Using this setting to study the role of traders in investment management, we document that trader managers identify and exploit short-term trading opportunities at lower transaction costs. These skills...

This paper analyzes the performance of portfolio strategies that invest in noload, open-end U.S. domestic equity mutual funds, incorporating predictability in (i) manager skills, (ii) fund risk-loadings, and (iii) benchmark returns. Predictability in manager skills is found to be the dominant...

We study a set of German open-end mutual funds for a time period during which this industry emerged from its infancy. In those years, the distribution channel for mutual funds was dominated by the brick-and-mortar retail networks of the large universal banks. Using monthly observations from...

This paper provides new evidence supporting the rationality of closed-end fund discounts by analyzing the time-series dynamics of individual fund discounts and their relation to portfolio performance and manager turnover. We show that discount changes reflect rational investor learning about...

We show that fund families allocate their fund managers to different market segments such that their skill is rewarded best. Whether a fund manager's skill is rewarded by higher alpha depends on the efficiency of the market segment in which she works. Even skilled managers can generate alpha...

This paper shows that portfolio constraints have important implications for management compensation and performance evaluation. Concretely, in the presence of portfolio constraints, allowing for benchmarking can be beneficial. Benchmark design arises as an alternative effort inducement mechanism...

The validity of the price marks placed on bonds for valuation purposes is important for a diverse group of stakeholders, including investors, mutual fund managers, dealers, pricing services, and financial regulators. We analyze the dispersion of monthend price marks simultaneously placed on...

We analyze the dispersion of month-end prices simultaneously placed on identical corporate bonds by different US mutual fund managers before and after initiations of TRACE and introductions of issuers into Markit's CDS database. Disseminated bonds show large and statistically significant...

Pressure from institutional money managers to generate profits in the short run is often blamed for corporate myopia. Theoretical research suggests that money managers' short term focus stems from their career concerns and greater fund transparency can amplify these concerns. Using a...

Processing qualitative information about a firm's product market competition matters for fund performance. I find that fund managers with a better understanding of a firm's market power exhibit a superior risk-adjusted performance. Managers who overweight companies with the fewest competitors...