I provide evidence that fund managers who overweight firms with the most differentiated products ('monopolies') exhibit a superior risk-adjusted performance. This is consistent with information advantages due to a better understanding of qualitative information on a firm's competitive...

In order to shed light on the "black box" of institutional equity investing in a systematic manner, I conducted a broadly based questionnaire which received a large response from German mutual fund companies. The survey asked fund managers for their basic views and practices and for insights...

Using fund-, firm- and bank-level data we investigate the investments of private equity (PE) funds in the north-western regions of Italy. Both the private equity fund managers and the PE investments are heavily concentrated in this most developed area of the country. The average size of the...

Although the 1940 Act restricts interfund lending within a mutual fund family, families can apply for exemptions from the regulator to participate in interfund lending. We find that heterogeneity in portfolio liquidity and investor flows across funds, funds' investment restrictions, and...

Private equity and venture capital (PE/VC) funding is the provision of equity capital by financial investors to non-quoted companies with high growth potential. It has a particular emphasis on entrepreneurial activities rather than on mature businesses. PE/VC investors differ on several...

The performance of hedge funds is of interest to investors looking for ways of generating value over passive strategies, particularly in bad times. This study used the Hedge Index database with over 9500 hedge funds to analyse, in depth, the performance of ten major strategies, during and after...

We study liquidity transformation in mutual funds using a novel data set on their cash holdings To provide investors with claims that are more liquid than the underlying assets, funds engage in substantial liquidity management. Specifically, they hold substantial amounts of cash, which they use...

Analysis of required expected return disclosures by public pension funds in individual asset classes reveals a reliance on past performance in setting return expectations. These extrapolative expectations operate through the expected risk premium and occur across all risky asset classes. Pension...

I model an open-end mutual fund investing in illiquid assets and show that the fund's endogenous cash management can generate shareholder runs even with a flexible NAV. The fund optimally re-builds its cash buffers at time t + 1 after outflows at t to prevent future forced sales of illiquid...

We develop an agent based model of traditional banks and asset managers. Our aim is to investigate the channels of contagion of shocks to asset prices within and between the two financial sectors, including the effects of fire sales and their impact on financial institutions' balance sheets. We...