We provide new empirical evidence suggesting that the marginal investor in mutual funds behaves differently across market conditions. If the marginal investor allocates capital across mutual funds rationally, then the relative performance of funds should be unpredictable. We find however that...

We study the impact of foreign institutional investors on global capital allocation and welfare using novel firm-level international data. Using MSCI index inclusion as an exogenous shock to foreign ownership, we show that greater foreign ownership leads to more informative stock prices and this...

Periodic sharp sustained increases and then reversals in asset prices lead many to posit irrational price bubbles. The general case for irrationality is that real asset prices simply have moved too much given the future real cash flows the assets are reasonably likely to produce. A corollary for...

We survey 885 institutional venture capitalists (VCs) at 681 firms to learn how they make decisions across eight areas: deal sourcing; investment selection; valuation; deal structure; post-investment value-added; exits; internal firm organization; and relationships with limited partners. In selecting...

Are market experts prone to heuristics, and if so, do they transfer across closely related domains--buying and selling? We investigate this question using a unique dataset of institutional investors with portfolios averaging $573 million. A striking finding emerges: while there is clear evidence...

Different share classes on the same firms provide a natural experiment to explore how investor clienteles affect momentum and short-term reversals. Domestic retail investors have a greater presence in Chinese A shares, and foreign institutions are relatively more prevalent in B shares. These...

We consider an economy in which investors believe dividend growth is predictable, when in reality it is not. We show that these beliefs lead to excess volatility and return predictability. We also show that these beliefs are rational in the face of evidence on dividend growth. We apply this...

We estimate institutional investor preferences based on their proxy voting records in publicly listed Russell 3000 firms. We employ a spatial model of proxy voting, the W-NOMINATE method for scaling legislatures, and map institutional investors onto a left-right dimension based on their votes...

Hedge fund managers contribute substantial personal capital, or "skin in the game," into their funds. While these allocations may better align incentives, managers may also strategically allocate their private capital in ways that negatively affect investors. We find that funds with more inside...