We study the optimal investment problem for a continuous time incomplete market model such that the risk-free rate, the appreciation rates and the volatility of the stocks are all random; they are assumed to be independent from the driving Brownian motion, and they are supposed to be currently...

For the problem of continuous time optimal portfolio selection, we found that the optimal strategies for investors with different performance criterions can be constructed using a limited number of fixed processes (mutual funds), for a incomplete market with a larger number of available risky...

Using the mutual fund industry as a laboratory, we demonstrate theoretically and empirically that economic policy uncertainty an affect investment decisions through an information rather than real options channel. Specifically, we find that fund flow-performance sensitivity decreases in...

Partisan bias in fund portfolios is the effect of fund manager's political affiliation on portfolio allocation decisions. I study two potential channels of this bias: biased expectations where managers become optimistic (pessimistic) when their party comes in (goes out of) the government, and...

Individual investors select high-fee index mutual funds despite the fact that the future payouts are nearly identical. We offer an explanation for this violation of the Law of One Price based on investor desire to diversify. While diversification in some settings may be beneficial, in the case...

Using proprietary data from a major fund data provider, we analyze the screening activity of investment consultants (ICs) who advise institutional investors with trillions of dollars in assets. We find that ICs frequently shortlist funds using threshold screens clustered at round, base 5 or base...

Our experiments evaluate the role of information presentation in reducing violations of the Law of One Price in individual investor selection of index mutual funds. The results indicate that most individuals fail to minimize fees. However, individuals allocate nearly 27% (43%) more of their...

This paper investigates the impact of using different risk-adjusted measures of performance on the evaluation of UK investment trusts. Significant negative skewness is probably the most important empirical property of the time series of returns under analysis. Performance results based on the...

We propose and test a framework of private information acquisition and decision timing for asset allocators hiring outside investment managers. Using unique data on due diligence interactions between an allocator and 860 hedge funds, we find that the production of private information complements...