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...

Both changing investors' behaviour and contingent events, such as financial crisis, stimulated a debate around the distribution of financial products for which an active market doesn't exist. Investing in illiquid financial instruments requires a certain degree of financial education in order to...

Our study is the first to combine returns based and characteristics based style analysis into a single style analysis model. We use Best Fit Indices to establish the ‘investment domains' of our sample managers, along the lines of size and ‘style,' and then use our multidimensional...

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...

Utilizing new SEC data enabling us to compute performance of mutual funds' derivative positions, we study how funds use derivatives and how derivatives contribute to performance. Despite small portfolio weights, derivatives significantly impact funds' leverage and contribute largely to returns...

The high cost of capital for firms conducting medical research and development (R&D) has been partly attributed to the government risk facing investors in medical innovation. This risk slows down medical innovation because investors must be compensated for it. We propose new and simple financial...

This study re-visits the question of benchmark mismatch among 1281 US equity mutual funds and its impact on benchmark-adjusted fund performance and ranking. All funds report S&P500 index as a prospectus benchmark, yet 2/3 of those are placed in the Morningstar category with risk and objectives...

Many college and university 403(b) plans restrict the menu of investment choices to funds offered by TIAA-CREF, the current manager of over half of all 403(b) contributions. Further, in the face of Internal Revenue Code changes that will take effect in 2006 and will make 403(b) plan ERISA...

Households participating in financial markets pay attention to inflation news when making their investment decisions, even in an environment of mostly low and stable inflation. ETFs and open-ended mutual funds holding Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) receive inflows from retail...

We study managerial turnover for both internally managed mutual funds and those managed externally by subadvisors. We argue that turnover of subadvisors provides sharper tests of any underlying board and sponsor monitoring because these data are heavily weighted toward involuntary turnover. We...