We exploit the staggered introduction of index funds in different segments and countries to study how increased competition from indexing affects the performance-flow relation and incentives of actively managed equity mutual funds. An increase in the market shares of available country-level...

We show that early-life family disruption (death or divorce of a parent) causes fund managers to be more risk averse when they manage their own funds. Treated managers take lower systematic, idiosyncratic, and downside risk than non-treated managers. This effect is most pronounced for managers...

We show a long-lasting association between a common societal phenomenon, early-life family disruption, and investment behavior. Fund managers who experienced the death or divorce of their parents during childhood take lower risk and are more likely to sell their holdings following riskincreasing...

We exploit the staggered introduction of index funds in different segments and countries to study how increased competition from indexing affects the performance-flow relation and incentives of actively managed equity mutual funds. An increase in the market shares of available country-level...

Investment performance depends on return measurement horizon. The percentage of U.S. equity mutual funds that outperform the SPY is 46.9% in monthly returns, 39.9% in annual returns, and 29.5% in full-sample (1991-2008) returns. Further, true alphas vary with return measurement horizon, and the...

Previous work shows large differences in fees for S&P 500 index funds and other funds, and suggests that investors suffer wealth losses investing in high-fee funds when similar low-fee funds are available. In contrast, the neoclassical model of mutual funds (Berk and van Binsbergen, 2015) argues...