This is the first study of corporate bond mutual fund performance that examines detailed security-level holdings and returns. The new database allows us to decompose the costs and benefits of active management. In contrast to prior research on equity funds that shows evidence of stock-selection...

The 1986 Tax Reform Act (TRA) replaced non-synchronous tax year-ends with a common October 31 year-end for all mutual funds. After the TRA, we find that funds systematically accelerated the sale of losers prior to October 31. A similar pattern is not present for funds before the TRA, of for...

U.S. equity mutual funds, on average, prefer realization of capital losses to capital gains. Nevertheless, a substantial fraction exhibits the disposition effect of realizing gains more readily than losses. My analysis suggests that learning effects have reduced the manifestation of the...