Regulatory arbitrage is an indispensable element of regulatory competition as it provides regulatory substitutes for firms, and allows those firms to optimally benefit from such competition. This also increases the elasticity of demand for regulators and engenders accountability among them....

We investigate why top performing hedge funds are successful. We find evidence that top performing hedge funds follow a different strategy than mediocre performing hedge funds as they accept fewer risk factors that mostly anticipate the troubling economic conditions prevailing after 2006....

In this paper, we explore how hedge fund database biases developed during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Our sample consists of 8,935 hedge funds from the Lipper TASS Hedge Fund Database for the January 2002-September 2010 time period. The theoretical foundation of this paper draws from Fung...

Using a parsimonious measure of investor protection constructed from fund organizational characteristics, this paper documents that companies targeted by activists with better investor protection structures outperform those targeted by poor-investor-protection activists by roughly 10% per year....

This paper studies the “confidential holdings” of institutional investors, especially hedge funds, where the quarter-end equity holdings are disclosed with a significant delay through amendments to the Form 13F. Our evidence supports hiding private information as the dominant motive for...

This study examines whether firms' disclosure decisions are affected by the presence of activist hedge funds. Using a large sample of firms that experienced increases in ownership by activist hedge funds, we find that firms are more likely to cease providing financial guidance or reduce the...

We study a sample of Form 13F filings where fund advisors seek confidential treatment for some, or all, of their 13(f)-reportable positions. Consistent with the hypothesis that managers seek confidentiality to protect proprietary information we find that confidential positions earn positive and...