We investigate how information processing frictions contribute to household suboptimal saving and investment behavior. We find that 60% of open accounts in college 529 savings plans are invested suboptimally due to high expenses and tax inefficiency. Such investments yield an expected loss of 9%...

Over the last two decades, the unprecedented increase in non-bank financial intermediation, particularly open-end mutual funds and ETFs, accounts for nearly half of the external financing flows to emerging markets exceeding cross-border lending by global banks. Evidence suggests that investment...

Frequent, yet uninformed, fund flows in Chilean pension plans generate substantial trading in currency markets due to the high allocation to international securities. These non-fundamental flows have a significant impact on the Chilean peso, which is estimated to have a relatively low price...

We model financial innovations such as Exchange-Traded Funds, smart beta products, and many index-based vehicles as composite securities (CSs) that facilitate trading the common factors in assets' liquidation values. Through accessing a larger basket of assets in endogenously chosen proportions,...

We examine how sell-side equity analysts strategically disclose information of differing quality to the public versus the buy-side mutual fund managers to whom they are connected. We consider cases in which analysts recommend that the public buys a stock, but some fund managers sell it. We...

Is shareholder interest in corporate social responsibility driven by pecuniary motives (abnormal rates of return) or non-pecuniary ones (willingness to sacrifice returns to address various firm externalities)? To answer this question, we categorize the literature into seven tests: (1) costs of...

Using granular data on the entire Brazilian securities lending market merged with all trades in the centralized stock exchange, we identify information leakage from short sellers. Our identification strategy explores trading execution mismatches between short sellers' selling activity in the...

Active equity funds care about fund size, affected by fund flows that obey a strong factor structure with the common component responding to macroeconomic shocks. Funds hedge against common flows by tilting their portfolios toward low-flow-beta stocks, while household/retail and index investors...

Economic interactions, such as crowdfunding, often involve sequential actions, observational learning, and contingent project implementation. We incorporate all-or-nothing thresholds in a canonical model of information cascades. Early supporters effectively delegate their decisions to a...

We provide evidence for a causal link between the US economy and the global financial cycle. Using intraday data, we show that US macroeconomic news releases have large and significant effects on global risky asset prices. Stock price indexes of 27 countries, the VIX, and commodity prices all...