We document that, on average, U.S. equity mutual funds prefer realizing capital losses rather than capital gains. A substantial fraction of the sample, however, exhibits the opposite tendency of realizing gains more readily than losses. The documented tendency for this subset appears to be due...

US equity mutual funds, on average, prefer realization of capital losses to capital gains. Nevertheless, a substantial fraction exhibits the disposition effect of realizing gains more readily than losses. My analysis suggests that learning effects have reduced the manifestation of the...

To optimally utilize their labor, fund families need to match their portfolio managers' skills with the job requirements of different funds. Fund families make it possible for their managers to try out different funds in a learning-by-trying fashion until they find their best match. After they...

We document that the speed of information dissemination within mutual fund families positively affects the performance of member funds. This suggests that the resulting benefits of higher information precision far outweigh free-riding costs associated with fast internal dissemination. The...

This is the first study of corporate-bond mutual fund performance that examines detailed security-level holdings and returns. The new database allows us to decompose the costs and benefits of active management. In contrast to prior research on equity funds that shows evidence of stock-selection...