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...

There is little empirical evidence regarding downside risk in asset pricing, due in part to problems inherent in estimating downside risk. We argue that Berk and van Binsbergen (2016)'s approach to testing asset pricing models using the relation between investor flows and risk-adjusted fund...

This paper shows that the stylized fact of average mutual fund underperformance documented in the literature stems from expansion periods when funds have statistically significant negative risk-adjusted performance and not recession periods when risk-adjusted fund performance is positive. These...

In the presence of rising concern about climate change that potentially affects risk and return of investors’ portfolio companies, active investors might have dispersed climate risk exposures. We compute mutual fund covariance with market-wide climate change news index and find that high...

Which trading strategies differentiate skilled mutual fund managers from their unsuccessful peers? This study provides evidence for a positive association between holdings' implied cost of capital (ICC) and future fund performance. Consistent with large transaction costs of ICC-based investments...

The aim of this paper is to present the method for estimating the cost of capital of typical portfolios available on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. The authors introduce the three factor Fama-French model and its two modifications. They also apply the bootstrap method to evaluate the variability of...

This paper analyzes how the existence of sector funds (specialists) within a mutual fund family affects the performance and investment behavior of affiliated diversified equity funds (generalists). First of all, I show that specialists have stock picking skills. Second, information flows from...

This study provides evidence that investors' demographic similarity to CEOs facilitates informed trading after accounting for selective distribution of information. Mutual fund managers overweight firms whose CEOs resemble them in terms of age, ethnicity, and gender. Significantly higher trade...

Why do investors keep buying underperforming mutual funds? To address this issue, we develop a one-period principal-agent model with a representative investor and a fund manager in an asymmetric information framework. This model shows that the investors perception of the fund plays the key role...

Using data on investments of fund family employees in their 401(k) plans, I show that employee flows predict fund performance up to two years. Moreover, employee flows lead flows of other investors, but not vice versa, further indicating that employee flows are smart. The predictive power of...