This article explores the influence of competitive conditions on the evolutionary fitness of risk preferences, using the professional competition between fund managers as a practical example. To explore how different settings of competition parameters, the exclusion rate and the exclusion...

This article explores the influence of competitive conditions on the evolutionary fitness of different risk preferences. As a practical example, the professional competition between fund managers is considered. To explore how different settings of competition parameters, the exclusion rate and...

We study the effects of local religious beliefs on mutual fund risk-taking behaviors. Funds located in low-Protestant or high-Catholic areas exhibit significantly higher fund return volatilities. Similar differences persist when we use the religiosity ratios at fund managers' college locations....

Using a comprehensive list of terrorist attacks over three decades, we find that aggregate investor risk aversion inversely relates to terrorist activity in the United States. A one standard deviation increase in the number of attacks each month leads to a $75.09 million drop in aggregate flows...

Prior theory suggests that time variation in the degree to which leverage constraints bind affects the pricing kernel. We propose a measure for this leverage constraint tightness by inverting the argument that constrained investors tilt their portfolios to riskier assets. We show that the...

By running a battery of incentivized and non-incentivized experiments with fund managers from four countries in the European Union, we investigate the impact of fund managers' cognitive skills and economic preferences on the dynamics of the mutual funds they manage. First, we find that fund...

This paper examines the agency conflict between mutual fund investors and mutual fund companies. Investors would like the fund company to use its judgement to maximize risk-adjusted fund returns. A fund company, however, in its desire to maximize its value as a concern has an incentive to take...

This paper studies the relationship between mutual fund manager investment horizons and managerial risk-taking decisions. I find that in general mutual funds reporting longer maximum evaluation horizons have lower risk levels. The low risk levels helped these funds mitigate their losses in the...