There is now extensive empirical evidence showing that fund managers have relative performance objectives and adapt their investment strategy in the last part of the calendar year to their performance in the early part of the year. However, emphasis was put on returns in excess of some exogenous...

This paper provides a detailed examination of individuals' active participation in a new public and mandatory defined contribution pension system. The new pension system was launched in the fall of 2000 and entitles Sweden's workforce of 4.4 million individuals to invest part of their individual...

This paper examines how investor and capital flows into mutual funds in the Swedish pension system are related to fund characteristics. Similarly to U.S. studies, we show that individuals chase past returns and have a strong preference for lower-fee funds. However, our results suggest that past...

This paper studies the relation between fund performance and the fund manager's investment strategy, which is based on the characteristics of the portfolio. The results show that neither momentum characteristics nor the valuation of stocks can explain differences in fund performance. However,...

The last financial crisis sheds dramatically light on the instability threatened by systemic risk. In this regard no common view appears to exist on the definition, the measurement and real impact on financial system. This paper aims to analyze the relation between systemic risk and portfolio...

This study examines the phenomenon of performance persistence of equity funds in Hungary in two time perspectives: 1-year and 6-month perspectives. The empirical results confirm the occurrence of performance dependence in consecutive periods. There is also a strong evidence of short-term...

Target-Date Funds (TDFs) are popular retirement investment vehicles that follow a predetermined schedule for rebalancing their mix of equity and fixed-income securities over time. We explore potential agency problems in TDFs by examining their return performance and their flow-performance...

This paper examines the factors that affect inflows – outflows of capital in bond mutual funds that operated in the Greek market during the period 1997-2005. Investors in bond mutual funds do not seek for high gross returns in order to determine their investment decisions in contrast with...

We propose a new approach for measuring mutual fund style and constructing characteristic-matched performance benchmarks that requires only portfolio holdings and two reference portfolios in each style dimension. The characteristic-matched performance benchmark literature typically follows a...

The current paper searches for the existence of various types of seasonal patterns in returns of Greek equity mutual funds during the period 2002-2005. At first, the paper reveals that the lowest day-of-the-week returns of funds occur on Monday and that the highest average returns relate to...