From 1992 to 2011, average R2 increased from 0.17 to 0.47. During this period, passive financial institutions also grew their ownership from 30 to 50% of the market. Passive investors do not perform fundamental research nor trade around firm-specific news, thus reducing the firm-specific...

We study the equilibrium implications of a multi-asset economy in which asset managers are subject to different benchmarks, and demonstrate how heterogeneous benchmarking generates a mechanism through which fundamental shocks propagate across assets. Fluctuations in asset managers' capital...