This paper proposes new performance decomposition measures that allow one to analyse the sources of returns on the international equity holdings of a large cross-section of UK pension funds. Our results suggest that the pension funds earned negative returns both from international market timing...

This paper analyses the international equity holdings of a large panel of UK pension funds. We find considerable evidence of market timing activity, as illustrated by the funds' decision to scale back their investments in the US stock market during the 1990s. To explain this we model portfolio...

Despite pension fund managers being largely unconstrained in their investment decisions, this paper reports evidence of clustering in the performance of a large cross-section of UK pension fund managers around the median fund manager. This finding is explained in terms of the predominance of a...

The past few decades have seen amajor shift from centralized to decentralized investment management by pension fund sponsors, despite the increased coordination problems that this brings. Using a unique, proprietary dataset of pension sponsors and managers, we identify two secular...

We analyze the relation between the location of a pension fund in its network and the investment performance, risk taking, and flows of the fund. Our approach analyzes the centrality of the fund's management company by examining the number of connections it has with other management companies...

This paper analyses the international equity holdings of a large panel of UK pension funds. We find considerable evidence of market timing activity, as illustrated by the funds' decision to scale back their investments in the US stock market during the 1990s. To explain this we model portfolio...