If investors are rational, the variance of closed-end mutual fund returns should equal the variance of the underlying securities in their portfolios. In fact, this paper shows that the average closed-end fund's monthly return is 64 percent more volatile than its assets. Unlike variance- bound...

Using a comprehensive database of American prisoners of war during World War II, we find that survival from captivity generally declines as the hierarchy of a prisoner's group becomes steeper or more closely matches the military's established hierarchy. There is no evidence that survival is...

Post-1970, share issuance exhibits a strong cross-sectional ability to predict stock returns. This predictive ability is more statistically significant than the individual predictive ability of size, book-to-market, or momentum. Our finding is related to research that finds that long-run returns...

We investigate investment managers' use of derivatives by comparing return distributions for equity mutual funds that use and do not use derivatives. In contrast to public perception, derivative users have risk exposure and return performance that are similar to nonusers. We also analyze changes...

We examine a distribution that is taxed as a capital gain rather than as a dividend. Since the distribution induces a realized capital gain while the price change is an unrealized gain, ex-day return behavior provides evidence of the value of tax-timing capital gains. We show that investors are...