Whereas risk tolerance is an important parameter of financial intermediation in markets for mutual funds, formal theoretical predictions show funds managers' choices of portfolio risk tolerances can be induced in entirety by wealth considerations. An important implication of this finding is the...

Purpose: Retail investors use information provided by mutual fund rating agencies to make investment decisions. This paper examines whether the ratings provide useful information to retail investors by analyzing the rating migration and closure risk of mutual funds that received Morningstar's...

The Italian mutual fund industry is in a severe crisis: its net assets have been experiencing a constant decrease since 1999, from 42% of GDP to 8% in 2011. Its returns are poor, too. An investment in mutual funds has accumulated in its 28-year life a loss larger than the initial asset value, if...

Rationality would suggest that advice-seeking investors receive benefits from costly financial advice. However, evidence documenting these benefits for U.S. investors has so far been lacking. This paper is the first to document that U.S. mutual fund investors indeed receive one of the many...

This chapter encapsulates the most recent findings on sovereign wealth fund (SWF) investment activity globally. The key research proposals addressed herein relate to the position of global SWFs among conventional and alternative asset managers, SWF allocation strategies, their recent investment...

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...

Rationality would suggest that advice-seeking investors receive benefits from costly financial advice. However, evidence documenting these benefits for U.S. investors has so far been lacking. This paper is the first to document that U.S. mutual fund investors indeed receive one of the many...

Managerial incentives are skewed in non-listed funds under finite horizons. Compensation structures are only indirectly related to shareholder wealth maximization when share prices are unobservable. Liquidity options for investors are limited in the absence of an exchange listing. Using a...

In recent years, the socially responsible investing (SRI) industry has become an important segment of international capital markets by incorporating ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) factors into investment selection and management processes. This study analyses whether SRI mutual funds...