Essays on mutual fund activeness and sustainability as a flow determinant

This dissertation contributes to two recent debates in the mutual fund literature: The impact of sustainability on mutual fund flows and the connection between fund activeness and mutual fund performance. In March 2016, Morningstar, one of the leading information providers in the mutual fund industry, introduced its mutual fund Sustainability Rating. The Rating provides investors with an easy-to-understand measure to identify funds that invest in accordance with high environmental, social, and governance standards. Chapter 1 investigates the effect of this Rating on mutual fund flows. An average high-rated retail fund receives up to USD 10.1 million higher net flows and an average low-rated retail fund suffers from up to USD 3.5 million lower net flows than an average-rated fund during the first year after the publication of the Rating. This result stresses the importance of sustainability as an investment criterion and the impact of the Sustainability Rating as a source of information to private investors. Chapters 2 through 4 examine whether the trading activity of a fund manager or fund activeness, that is the deviation of a fund portfolio from its benchmark, is linked to future performance. The fund literature has identified various activity measures that can predict fund returns. Chapter 2 shows that two of the most important measures, Active Share and the R2 selectivity measure, have not been good predictors after 2003 when controlling for different benchmark indices and alternative risk factors. Chapter 3 examines the investment performance of funds whose exposures to the risk factors of the Carhart model vary significantly over time. The analysis shows that funds with volatile factor weights achieve on average lower returns than funds with stable factor exposures. After testing for alternative explanations, this result provides evidence that fund managers fail to time risk factors. This finding also contributes to the current debate on whether risk factors can be timed. Chapter 4 addresses the question whether fund managers trade more in times of large market mispricing and, therefore, whether fund turnover is positively correlated to the subsequent fund performance. The results confirm respective findings from earlier research for an international mutual fund sample. They additionally show that this turnover-performance relationship is particularly strong in countries with highly skilled fund managers, who trade more in times of high market opportunities. Furthermore, the effect is stronger in markets with a low performance persistence.