In this paper we study systemic risk for the US and Europe. We show that banks' exposures to common risk factors are crucial for systemic risk. We come to this conclusion by first showing that relations between US and European banks are smaller than within each region. We then show that European...

In this paper we study systemic risk for North America and Europe. We show that banks' exposures to common risk factors are crucial for systemic risk. We come to this conclusion by first showing that relations between North American and European banks are smaller than within each region. We then...

This paper investigates politically connected firms in Germany. With the introduction of a new transparency law in 2007, information on additional income sources for all members of the German parliament became publicly available. We find that members of the conservative party (CDU/CSU) and the...

Regulatory and media concern has focused heavily on the potentially manipulative distortion of market prices associated with naked short selling. However, naked shorting can also have beneficial effects for liquidity and pricing efficiency. We empirically investigate the impact of naked...

This study describes the Indian corporate governance system and examines how the system has both supported and held back India's ascent to the top ranks of the world's economies. While on paper the country's legal system provides some of the best investor protection in the world, enforcement is...

In this paper, we identify and document the empirical characteristics of the key drivers of convertible arbitrage as a strategy and how they impact the performance of convertible arbitrage hedge funds. We show that the returns of a buy-and-hedge strategy involving taking a long position in...

We examine the determinants and consequences of the multitasking phenomenon in the mutual fund industry where fund managers simultaneously manage multiple funds. We show that wellperforming managers multitask either by taking over poorly performing funds within fund companies (i.e., acquired...

This paper develops a simple technique that controls for false discoveries, or mutual funds that exhibit significant alphas by luck alone. Our approach precisely separates funds into (1) unskilled, (2) zero-alpha, and (3) skilled funds, even with dependencies in cross-fund estimated alphas. We...

This paper implements strategies that use macroeconomic variables to select European equity mutual funds, including Pan-European, country, and sector funds. We find that several macro-variables are useful in locating funds with future outperformance, and that countryspecific mutual funds provide...

We examine the influence on managerial risk taking of incentives due to employment risk and due to compensation. Our empirical investigation of the risk taking behavior of mutual fund managers indicates that managerial risk taking crucially depends on the relative importance of these incentives....