Historical data suggest that the base rate for a severe, single-day stock market crash is relatively low. Surveys of individual and institutional investors, conducted regularly over a 26-year period in the United States, show that they assess the probability to be much higher. We examine factors...

Socially responsible (SR) institutions tend to focus more on the ESG performance and less on quantitative signals of value. Consistent with this difference in focus, we find that SR institutions react less to quantitative mispricing signals. Our evidence suggests that the increased focus on ESG...

Using a novel data of institutional investors' bond holdings, we examine a transmission of the crisis of 2007-2008 from the securitized bond market to the corporate bond market via joint ownership of these bonds by investors. We posit that, ceteris paribus, corporate bonds held by investors with...

We provide new empirical evidence suggesting that the marginal investor in mutual funds behaves differently across market conditions. If the marginal investor allocates capital across mutual funds rationally, then the relative performance of funds should be unpredictable. We find however that...

This paper investigates whether mutual fund families acting as trustees of 401(k) plans display favoritism toward their own funds. Using a hand-collected dataset on retirement investment options, we show that poorly-performing funds are less likely to be removed from and more likely to be added...

Participants in defined contribution (DC) retirement plans rarely adjust their portfolio allocations, suggesting that their investment choices and consequent money flows are sticky and not discerning. Yet, the participants' inertia could be offset by the DC plan sponsors, who adjust the plan's...

Using a large sample of institutional investors' private equity investments in venture and buyout funds, we estimate the extent to which investors' skill affects returns from private equity investments. We first consider whether investors have differential skill by comparing the distribution of...

We analyze whether the growing importance of passive investors has influenced the campaigns, tactics, and successes of activists. We find activists are more likely to pursue changes to corporate control or influence (e.g., via board representation) and to forego more incremental changes to...

We survey a representative sample of U.S. individuals about how well leading academic theories describe their financial beliefs and decisions. We find substantial support for many factors hypothesized to affect portfolio equity share, particularly background risk, investment horizon, rare...

The literature has not unambiguously established that a positive alpha, as traditionally measured, means that an investor would want to buy a fund. However, when alpha is defined using the client's marginal utility function, a client faced with a positive alpha would generally want to buy. When...