This paper analyzes the relevance of Behavioral Finance in the functioning of financial markets. As a result of the empirical evidence through four surveys to professional investors with an average of 92 respondents, our main focus is to enhance the structure and systematization in the field. We...

Empirical studies document that investors typically deviate significantly from a globally market value weighted portfolio, concentrating their portfolio holdings in securities domiciled in their home country and in familiar foreign markets. Evidence that home country concentration stems from an...

The average alpha of mutual funds is an indication of whether it pays off to invest in actively managed funds. In this study we show that a substantial part of the variation in the average alpha can be explained by exogenous factors. The most important factors are the average expense ratio, the...

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...

We hypothesize that prestigious golf courses attract golfers and visitors from across the country, providing greater opportunities for nearby investors to build social connections. Our evidence suggests that institutional investors located near prestigious golf courses earn significantly better...

This study shows that mutual fund managers vary in their reliance on category-level information, relative to firm-specific information about assets. Moreover, fund performance decreases with managers' propensity to rely on categories. Fund managers display less skill in picking stocks which are...

This paper explores the time-varying institutional investor preference for lottery-like stocks. On average, institutional investor holdings reflect an aversion to lottery-like stocks. However, I find that an institutions' aversion to lottery-like stocks is reduced when investor sentiment is low....

This paper examines intentional herding among institutional investors with a particular focus on the technology sector that was the driver of the “New Economy” in the United States during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s. Using data on technology stockholdings of 115 large institutional...

We examine whether actively managed equity mutual funds trade on localised information events - syndicated loan covenant violations and changes in bank loan and entity ratings. Local investors achieve positive abnormal stock returns only around covenant violation periods rather than changes in...

We find that strong disagreements between hedge funds and other institutions in their common stock trades are twice as likely as agreements. The overall success of hedge funds’ trades is confined to disagreement stocks. While hedge funds are on average positive feedback traders, albeit weaker...