Using a novel measure of stock-level trade imitation, we uncover "smart" copycats: fund managers that use their own information when beneficial, and otherwise imitate other managers' better trades. Contrary to previous research, we find that these partial imitation strategies lead to...

The concept of fund manager herding has been studied in depth, and the most widely used measure applied to this market-wide phenomena is the one incepted in Lakonishok, Shleifer & Vishny (1992), LSV. However, this measure has been much criticized, and its validity is still in doubt. This paper...

This study examines how depositors choose among different banks and over time in Colombia, focusing on whether they discipline bank behavior. By controlling for a more comprehensive set of risk/return factors, the study improves upon conventional market discipline tests. Panel data estimations...

After several decades of financial repression with some partial attempts at liberalization, Colombian policymakers set out to complete the liberalization process in the early nineties, reducing financial taxation, freeing interest rates, facilitating entry/exit, and eliminating capital account...

This paper examines the determinants of the high intermediation spread observed in the Colombian banking sector for over two decades. A reduced-form equation is estimated on the basis of a bank profit maximization model that permits a decomposition into operational costs, financial taxation,...

After building up foreign currency-denominated (FC) liabilities over several years, the balance sheets of Colombian firms might be particularly vulnerable to a shift in external conditions. This paper undertakes four exercises in order to get a better understanding of these vulnerabilities....