More and more investors apply socially responsible screens when building their stock portfolios. This raises the question whether these investors can increase their performance by incorporating such screens into their investment process. To answer this question we implement a simple trading...

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....

We examine the extent of the Status Quo Bias (SQB) in a real-world repeated decision situation. Individuals who are subject to a SQB tend to choose an alternative that was chosen previously (i.e. their status quo), even if it is not the optimal choice any more. We examine the US equity mutual...

Due to a lack of data availability, numerous empirical studies on mutual fund flows (e.g. Sirri/Tufano (1998)) analyze synthetically derived flow measures. We show how good these measures can explain actual flows. We compare the measures suggested in the literature with the actual net-flows of...

This paper examines the influence of the position of a fund within its family on its subsequent net-inflows. Our empirical study of the US equity mutual fund market shows that reaching a top position within the family leads to large inflows. These inflows accrue beyond those expected, given the...

I investigate the consequences for mutual funds' operational outcomes when fund families focus their efforts on their core competency, i.e. portfolio management, by outsourcing noncore activities to external providers. Specifically, I find that funds of families that outsource shareholder...