The beta dispersion, which is the spread of betas on a stock market, can be interpreted as a measure of market vulnerability. This study examines the economic idea of the beta dispersion and its application as a market return predictor. Based on the empirical beta dispersion observed in the US...

Investment funds are highly connected with each other, but also with the broader financial system. In this paper, we quantify potential vulnerabilities arising from funds' connectedness. While previous work exclusively focused on indirect connections (overlapping asset portfolios) between...

Is the asset management sector a source of financial instability? This paper contributes to the debate by performing a macroprudential stress test in order to quantify systemic risks in the mutual fund sector. For this purpose we include the welldocumented flow-performance relationship as an...

Using a unique data set that contains the complete ownership structure of the German stock market, we study the momentum and contrarian trading of different investor groups. Foreign investors and financial institutions, and especially mutual funds, are momentum traders, whereas private...

Using a unique dataset on the sectoral ownership structure of euro area equity mutual funds, we study how different investor groups contribute to the negative performance externality from large outflows. Investment funds, as holders of mutual funds, are the main contributors to the flow...

There are many important decision problems where learning through experimentation is costly or impossible. In these situations, individuals may try to learn from observing the outcomes of others who have made similar decisions. Often, however, information about others comprises a selected...

One of the reasons for the recent crisis is that financial institutions took "too much risk" (Brunnermeier, 2009; Taylor et al., 2010). Why were these institutions taking so much risk is an open question. A recent strand in the literature points towards the "cognitive dissonance" of investors who,...