This paper first highlights the structural features of shadow banking in the euro area, focusing on investment funds. It then discusses the potential systemic risks that the recent expansion of the investment fund sector presents. While investment funds provide important intermediation services...

I analyze welfare properties of mutual funds in the Diamond-Dybvig model with two sources of aggregate risk: undiversifiable interest rate risk and shocks to aggregate liquidity demand. Mutual funds are inefficient when the economy faces undiversifiable interest rate risk. However, if only...

I revisit the Diamond-Dybvig model of liquidity insurance in the presence of hidden trades. The key result is that in this environment deposit-taking banks are not necessary for the efficient provision of liquidity. Mutual funds are constrained efficient when supplemented with the same...

This article examines competition and investor behavior in the mutual fund industry for the universe of US mutual funds during 1976-2009. Over this period, industry assets increased by a factor of 200, the number of active fund families quadrupled, and the average market share of a family...

Fund managers are double agents; they serve both fund investors and owners of management firms. This conflict of interest may result in trading to support securities prices. Tests of this hypothesis in the Spanish mutual fund industry indicate that bank-affiliated mutual funds systematically...

How to prevent runs on open-end mutual funds? In recent years, markets have observed an innovation that changed the way open-end funds are priced. Alternative pricing rules (known as swing pricing) adjust funds' net asset values to pass on funds' trading costs to transacting shareholders. Using...

The prolonged stagnation bank credit expansion, especially after the outbreak of recent economic and financial crises, has produced a significant impact on the availability of new and long-term sources of business financing, mainly related to mid and large-size companies, but also to start-ups....

Against the backdrop of COVID-19, we study how the interactions of mutual funds and dealers introduce fragility to the municipal bond market and carry lasting impacts. During the crisis, trading activities surge while dealers' liquidity provision plunges for mutual-fund-held bonds, leading to...

This paper analyzes the approaches adopted by institutional investors to manage climate risk in their portfolios and proposes policies to increase climate awareness in this large segment of the capital markets. Because of their size and their role as conduit of savers' climate concerns to the...