We find evidence that is consistent with the hypothesis that daily mutual fund flows may be instruments for investor sentiment about the stock market. We use this finding to construct a new index of investor sentiment, and validate this index using data from both the United States and Japan. In...

Mutual funds must disclose their portfolio holdings to investors semiannually. The costs and benefits of such disclosures are a long-standing subject of debate. For actively managed funds, one cost of disclosure is a potential reduction in the private benefits from research on asset values....

One unusual feature of the U.S. property-casualty insurance industry is the coexistence of stock and mutual companies. This paper explores the performance of these forms in the industry through a dynamic assessment of how mutual and stock insurance companies respond to differences in their...

This paper examines the proposition that fluctuations in discounts on closed end funds are driven by changes in individual investor sentiment toward closed end funds and other securities. The theory implies that discounts on various funds must move together, that new funds get started when...

Mutual funds change their risk levels significantly over time. This paper investigates the performance consequences of risk shifting, as well as the economic motivations and the mechanisms of risk shifting. Using a holdings-based measure of risk shifting, we find that funds that increase risk...

We propose a model where investors hire fund managers to invest either in risky bonds or in riskless assets. Some managers have superior information on the default probability. Looking at the past performance, investors update beliefs on their managers and make firing decisions. This leads to...

This paper presents new stylized facts on the distribution of the home bias at the fund level. We find (i) a large heterogeneity in the degree of home bias across mutual funds; (ii) a positive correlation between the size of funds and home bias; and (iii) a positive correlation between the size...

Cross border capital flows and returns on assets are two key variables in international macroeconomics. Difficult endogeneity issues plague any analysis of their correlations in aggregate data. This paper examines the dynamics of international portfolios with a unique data set on the stock...

This paper examines the dissemination of market timing information (signals on the overall performance of risky assets relative to the risk free rate). We consider two delivery systems. Under the newsletter delivery system market timing information is disseminated solely through newsletter....

In a frictionless market with perfect information, a shareholder-wealth- maximizing firm should force conversion of its convertible bond issue into stock as soon as the bond comes in-the-money. Firms however appear to systematically delay forced conversion, sometimes for years, beyond this time....