This study analyzes the loss potential arising from investments into CDS and CDS use-induced risk and performance implications for a sample of large U.S. and German mutual funds. For several funds in the U.S., the regulatory potential losses arising from selling CDS protection are almost as high...

Portfolio Complexity and Herd Behavior: Evidence from the German Mutual Fund Market We examine the herd behavior among equity funds in Germany based on a large sample of funds from 2000 to 2009. We show that a large portion of the detected herding can be explained by identical trading among...

This paper analyzes the relation between correlation risk and the cross-section of hedge fund returns.Legal framework and investment mandate imply that hedge funds can be severely exposed tocorrelation risk: Hedge funds ability to enter long-short positions can be useful to reduce marketbeta,...

This paper studies the flow-performance relationship of three di®erent investorgroups in mutual funds: Households, financial corporations, and insurance compa-nies and pension funds, establishing the following findings: Financial corporationshave a strong tendency to chase past performance and...

We present evidence of the impact of buy-side analysts on the behavior and performanceof fund managers. Using data provided by a large global asset manager,we relate buy-side analysts’ recommendations to fund transactions on a daily basis.Our results show that buy-side analysts have a...

In enhanced annuities, the annuity payment depends on one's state ofhealth at some contracted date while in "standard annuities", it does not.The focus of this paper is on an annuity market where "standard" and en-hanced annuities are oered simultaneously. When all insured know equallywell on...

The direct financial impact of the financial crisis has been to deal a heavy blow to investment-based pensions; many workers lost a substantial portion of their retirement saving. The financial sector implosion produced an economic crisis for the rest of the economy via high unemployment and...

More and more investors apply socially responsible screens when building their stock portfolios. This raises the question whether these investors can increase their performance by incorporating such screens into their investment process. To answer this question we implement a simple trading...

This paper develops a simple technique that controls for false discoveries, or mutual funds that exhibit significant alphas by luck alone. Our approach precisely separates funds into (1) unskilled, (2) zero-alpha, and (3) skilled funds, even with dependencies in cross-fund estimated alphas. We...