This paper examines the performance of 358 European diversified equity mutual funds controlling for gender differences. Fund performance is evaluated against funds' designated market indices and representative style portfolios. Consistently with previous studies, no significant differences in...

In this paper, we provide evidence for a risk-taking channel of monetary policy transmission in the euro area that works through an increase in shadow banks' total asset growth and their risk assets ratio. Our dataset covers the period 2003Q1 - 2017Q3 and includes, in addition to the standard...

Actively managed Swedish equity mutual funds outperform the market in 1993-2001 but have negative gross and net excess returns of -0.18 and -1.47 per cent per year in 2002-2013. Across funds, there is no correlation between activism and return in the later period. Returns show little or no...

We explore the sources of racial disparities in small business lending by studying the $806 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was designed to support small business jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. PPP loans were administered by private lenders but federally guaranteed, largely...

The phenomenal growth of cryptocurrencies raises important questions about their footprint on the financial system. What role are traditional financial intermediaries playing in cryptocurrency markets and what drives their engagement? Are new nodes emerging? We help answer these questions by...

The eurozone has a single short-term nominal interest rate, but monetary policy conditions measured by real short-term interest rates varied substantially across countries in the period 2003 - 2010. We use this cross-country variation in the (local) tightness of monetary policy to examine its...

Pension benefit guarantee policies have been introduced in several countries to protect private pension plan members from the loss of income that would occur if a plan was underfunded when the sponsoring firm terminates a plan. Most of these public insurance schemes face financial difficulty and...

Over the last decade foreign bond portfolio positions in US dollar assets have risen above the reciprocal US investor positions in foreign currencies. In periods of increased economic uncertainty, institutional investors hedge their international bond positions, which creates a net hedging...

Households participating in financial markets pay attention to inflation news when making their investment decisions, even in an environment of mostly low and stable inflation. ETFs and open-ended mutual funds holding Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) receive inflows from retail...

This paper explores whether social preferences influence portfolio choices of retail investors. We use administrative investor trading records which we link to decisions of the same investors in experiments with real money at stake. We show that social preferences rather than return expectations...