Both post-repurchase abnormal returns and "reported" improvement in operating performance are driven, at least in part, by pre-repurchase downward earnings management rather than genuine growth in profitability. The downward earnings management increases with both the percentage of the company...

We apply a new bootstrap statistical technique to examine the performance of the U.S. open-end, domestic equity mutual fund industry over the 1975 to 2002 period. A bootstrap approach is necessary because the cross section of mutual fund alphas has a complex nonnormal distribution due to...