This paper examines the quality of credit ratings assigned to banks in Europe and the United States by the three largest rating agencies over the past two decades. We interpret credit ratings as relative assessments of creditworthiness, and define a new ordinal metric of rating error based on...

We investigate regulatory arbitrage during the G20's global derivatives market reform. Using hand-collected data on staggered reform progress, we find that banks shift their trading towards less regulated jurisdictions. The result is driven by agenda items – such as the promotion of central...

We study how the introduction of a law protecting consumer data privacy affects the cost of credit in the US mortgage market. Our estimates reveal that the California Consumer Protection Act increases loan spreads charged by banks by 8 basis points but that it has no effect on the fixed...

We use a new data set to study the determinants of the performance of open-end actively managed equity mutual funds in 27 countries. We find that mutual funds underperform the market overall. The results show important differences in the determinants of fund performance in the U.S. and elsewhere...

This article analyzes the effect of liquidity risk on the performance of various hedge fund portfolio strategies. Similarly to Avramov et al. (2007), we find that, before accounting for the effect of liquidity risk, hedge fund portfolios that incorporate predictability in managerial skills...

We develop a principal-agent model based on a sequential game played by a representative investor and a fund manager in an asymmetric information framework. The model shows that investors' perceptions of the fund market play the key role in the fund's fee-setting mechanism. The managers' true...

We test relative illiquidity, exemplified through a temporary lock-up, as a partial explanation for the gap between theoretical and empirical weights for real estate in a multi-asset portfolio. Since asset correlations are known to increase in bear markets, reducing their diversification...

The paper studies liquidity provision by institutional investors using trade-level data. We find that hedge fund trades are a more important predictor of stock-level liquidity than mutual fund trades. However, hedge funds' liquidity provision is more exposed to financial conditions than that of...

We develop a two-period general equilibrium model of portfolio delegation with competitive, differentially skilled managers and convex compensation contracts. We show that convex incentives lead to significant equilibrium mispricing, but reduce price volatility. In particular, price...

The eurozone has a single short-term nominal interest rate, but monetary policy conditions measured by either real short-term interest rates or Taylor rule residuals varied substantially across countries in the period from 2003-2010. We use this cross-country variation in the (local) tightness...