We use novel data on individual activity in a sports betting market to study the effect of past performance sequences on individual behavior in a real market. The revelation of fundamental values in this market enables us to disentangle whether behavior is caused by sentiment or by superior...

We propose a novel methodology that jointly estimates the proportions of skilled/unskilled funds and the cross-sectional distribution of skill in the mutual fund industry. We model this distribution as a three-component mixture of a point mass at zero and two components — one negative, one...

Using trading data from a sports-wagering market, we estimate individuals' dynamic risk preferences within the prospect-theory paradigm. This market's experimental-like features facilitate preference estimation, and our long panel enables us to study whether preferences vary across individuals...

Barras, Scaillet, Wermers (2010) propose the False Discovery Rate to separate skill (alpha) from luck in fund performance. Using simulations with parameters informed by the data, we find that this methodology is overly conservative and underestimates the proportion of nonzero-alpha funds. E.g.,...

We construct novel measures of funds' environmental, social, and governance (ESG) commitment by applying text analysis to the discretionary investment-strategy descriptions in their prospectuses. We find that investors respond strongly to text-based ESG measures. Using discrepancies between...