A survey of fund managers reveals home bias for these sophisticated investors in an unrestricted setting. Proximity, perceived informational advantage and higher expected returns are confirmed as accompanying factors. In addition, the home bias of equity managers is also related to...

Based on a questionnaire survey the paper distinguishes between herding asset managers who try to be good and non-herding asset managers who try to be better than their competitors. It provides evidence for reputational herding and discusses herding managers' working effort, preferred sources of...

This paper offers new insights into the Italian mutual fund industry. Surveying Italian professionals, we do not only reveal typical gender differences but also detect divergence to their German counterparts. While disclosing Italian professionals? overly positive self-assessment in general, we...

Existing empirical evidence is inconclusive on whether professional investors show sophisticated behavior or not, a question which is at the heart of market efficiency. This ambiguous evidence is mostly based on trading data or laboratory evidence, which each has its limitations. We complement...

We examine the role of institutional investors in financial markets and in corporate governance. In many countries, institutional investors have become the predominant players in financial markets and their influence worldwide is growing, chiefly due to the privatization and development of...

Although U.S. restaurant firms face high risks in diversifying their operations internationally, there are no previous studies that motivate international diversification. If international diversification is risky then why do restaurant firms go abroad? This study focuses on one potential...

This study is an empirical examination of a new theory that links dividends to institutional ownership in a framework of both information signaling and agency costs. Under this theory put forth by Allen, Bernardo and Welch in 2000, dividends are paid out to attract tax-favored institutional...

In the first essay, I examine the association between auditor industry specialization and earnings management choices. Prior research suggests that industry specialist auditors constrain accounting-based earnings management. But such actions may cause client companies to seek alternative means...

The first chapter analyzes both the disposition effect and trading performance at the individual level to determine whether and how investors learn from their trading experience. The study finds that performance improves and the disposition effect declines as investors become more experienced,...

This thesis presents two essays in Corporate Finance. In the first essay, I use the August 2007 crisis episode to gauge the effect of financial contracting on real firm behavior. I identify heterogeneity in financial contracting at the onset of the crisis by exploiting ex-ante variation in...