Dichev (2007, American Economic Review), in an influential paper, examines the gap between the performance of major stock markets and the dollar-weighted performance of investors in these markets. He finds a significant gap of 1.3 percent per year for NYSE/AMEX and 1.5 percent internationally....

Existing work on mutual fund performance persistence has obtained diverse results, depending on the group of funds studied. We examine whether performance persistence within a peer group of competing mutual funds depends on the group's composition. The UK mutual fund industry is ideal for such...

In the extensive debate about investment professionals' ability to add value, there has been scant evidence on the role played by industry expertise. To shed light on this issue, we study own-industry investing. Specifically, we analyze how well individual mutual funds as well as mutual fund...

The financial sector is unique in being largely self-governed: the majority of financial firms' shares are held by other financial institutions. This raises the possibility that monitoring of financial firms is especially undermined by conflicts of interest due to personal and professional links...

In the extensive debate about investment professionals' ability to add value, there has been scant evidence on the role played by industry expertise. To shed light on this issue, we study own industry investing. Specifically, we analyse how well individual mutual funds as well as mutual fund...

Many firms voluntarily incur the costs of attempting to influence politicians. However, estimates of the value of political connections have been made in only a few extreme cases. We propose a new approach to valuing political ties that builds on these previous studies. We consider connected to...

We document that the quality of earnings reported by politically connected firms is significantly poorer than that of similar non-connected companies. Our results are not due to firms with ex-ante poor earnings quality establishing connections more often. Instead, our results suggest that,...