To best utilize labor, companies need to match their employees’ skills with jobs that best fit those skills. Exploiting unique features of the mutual fund industry, we identify instances when this matching happens for fund managers and study its consequences. After fund managers are matched,...

Human capital acquired while working in other industries before joining fund management provides fund managers with an information advantage. Fund managers exploit this advantage by overweighting their experience industries, picking outperforming stocks from these industries, and timing...

This is the first study of corporate-bond mutual fund performance that examines detailed security-level holdings and returns. The new database allows us to decompose the costs and benefits of active management. In contrast to prior research on equity funds that shows evidence of stock-selection...

We assess the abilities and the role of buy-side analysts within mutual fund families by analyzing mutual funds managed by buy-side analysts from fourteen fund families. Buy-side analysts exhibit investment abilities by realizing positive style- and risk-adjusted returns. Analysts' skills have a...

Given recent regulatory inquiries into the derivative-trading practices of mutual funds, we examine their detailed option holdings to assess how mutual funds employ options, what funds use options, and how that affects performance and risk. Mutual funds' use of options appears consistent with...

Given recent regulatory inquiries into the derivative-trading practices of mutual funds, we examine their detailed option holdings to assess how mutual funds employ options, what funds use options, and how that affects performance and risk. Mutual funds' use of options appears consistent with...

We analyze the dispersion of month-end prices simultaneously placed on identical corporate bonds by different US mutual fund managers before and after initiations of TRACE and introductions of issuers into Markit's CDS database. Disseminated bonds show large and statistically significant...

Human capital acquired while working in other industries before joining fund management provides fund managers with an information advantage. Fund managers exploit this advantage by overweighting their experience industries and by picking outperforming stocks from these industries. These...

Using a novel return-based method to detect allocations of corporate bond offerings, which are underpriced on average, we find that mutual funds most active in the primary market generate significant alpha and outperform those that are less active. Our evidence suggests that underwriters direct...