We examine how institutional investors trade stocks with high research and development (R&D) expenses and investigate whether they can detect value-relevant R&D. We document significant differences between hedge funds and other institutional investors in terms of their trading in high R&D...

Selecting managers on the basis of past performance is an intuitive strategy that seems trusted by investors. Indeed, many studies report a positive correlation between past fund returns and investor cash flows. Evidence also suggests that at least at shorter-term horizons investing with the top...

This paper explores the role mutual fund herding plays on the return comovement in Chinese stocks. The results show that mutual fund herding significantly reduces the return comovement among Chinese stocks, providing evidence for the existence of a rational herding behavior by mutual funds. We...

We analyze the effect of different interest rate environments on the institutional investors' preferences towards risk using data on their holdings from 13f filings. We find strong empirical evidence for the predictions Rajan (2006) on how different interest rate characteristics affect...

This report analyzes data on a group of consistent Roth IRA investors — those holding accounts with the same financial services provider at the end of each year from 2007 through 2014 — drawn from The IRA Investor Database to gain insight into how Roth IRA investors fared during and after...

To understand why investors hold socially responsible mutual funds, we link administrative data to survey responses and behavior in incentivized experiments. We find that both social preferences and social signaling explain socially responsible investment (SRI) decisions. Financial motives play...

To understand why investors hold socially responsible mutual funds, we link administrative data to survey responses and behavior in incentivized experiments. We find that both social preferences and social signaling explain socially responsible investment (SRI) decisions. Financial motives play...

We interview professional institutional investors to learn how they choose between active and passive management, select active equity managers and construct multi-manager portfolios. We find that many of the aspects emphasized in the fund management literature, such as returns generated by the...

We examine the proposition that investor attention affects the optimality of financial decisions. Using a novel dataset on the sociodemographic characteristics of visitors to mutual fund websites, we link the characteristics of investors to the characteristics of mutual funds that capture their...

We present a framework for deciding when to choose an alternative to passively investing in capitalization-weighted indices within any particular asset class. Five reasons are identified for seeking an alternative. Three of these reflect situations where a capitalization-weighted index is either...