Some investment advisors offer multiple versions of a fund with the same manager and highly correlated returns. But these twinʺ funds are separate portfolios for different investors with differing abilities to select and monitor managers. Using a matched sample of retail and institutional twin...

The paper builds on a simple yet novel idea that the way investors react to the recent mutual fund performance depends largely upon the long-term historical performance of that fund. In particular, I find that investors react more actively to the fund's recent performance in case of the funds...

Using detailed mutual fund holdings in the US market, we estimate active mutual fund managers’ loss aversion as a function of both funds’ past performance and asset allocations. We document a substantial variation in loss aversion over time. We further find managers' loss aversion is higher...

Using the herding measures of Lakonishok, Shleifer and Vishny (1992) (LSV) and Frey, Herbst and Walter (2007) (FHW), we assess herding by French equity mutual funds between 1999 and 2005. We show that LSV herding amounts to 6.5% while FHW herding is about 2.5 times stronger. We observe that...

We examine whether equity issuances (IPOs and SEOs) are in part driven by investor sentiment by using equity mutual fund flows to proxy for the rational and/or irrational components of aggregate demand for equity. We find that more firms issue equity when flows are higher and repurchase equity...

We assess the abilities and the role of buy-side analysts within mutual fund families by analyzing mutual funds managed by buy-side analysts from fourteen fund families. Buy-side analysts exhibit investment abilities by realizing positive style- and risk-adjusted returns. Analysts' skills have a...

This paper analyzes the effect of investor monitoring on the performance of equity investment funds. For that purpose, we analyze the relationship between fund performance, measured using four-factor Alpha, and a set of control variables and monitoring proxy variables. We used monthly data for...

The average alpha of mutual funds is an indication of whether it pays off to invest in actively managed funds. In this study we show that a substantial part of the variation in the average alpha can be explained by exogenous factors. The most important factors are the average expense ratio, the...

This paper develops a diagnostic tool for candidate performance measures that accounts for investor disagreement in mutual funds. We compare the evaluation for best clienteles, specified by an upper admissible performance bound, to the one for representative investors implicit in twelve models....