We study tradeoffs among active mutual funds' characteristics. In both our equilibrium model and the data, funds with larger size, lower expense ratio, and higher turnover hold more-liquid portfolios. Portfolio liquidity, a concept introduced here, depends not only on the liquidity of the...

This paper focuses on funds of funds (FOFs) as a form of financial intermediation in private equity (both buyout and venture capital). After accounting for fees, FOFs provide returns equal to or above public market indices for both buyout and venture capital. While FOFs focusing on buyouts...

We study the relation between mutual fund managers' family backgrounds and their professional performance. Using hand-collected data from individual Census records on the wealth and income of managers' parents, we find that managers from poor families deliver higher alphas than managers from...

We study liquidity transformation in mutual funds using a novel data set on their cash holdings. To provide investors with claims that are more liquid than the underlying assets, funds engage in substantial liquidity management. Specifically, they hold substantial amounts of cash, which they use...

Marketing and distribution expenses are responsible for about a third of the cost of active management in the mutual fund industry. We develop and estimate a structural model of mutual fund marketing with learning about unobserved skill and costly investor search. Our estimates suggest that...

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...

This paper undertakes a comprehensive analysis of alternative investment vehicles in private equity, using unexplored custodial data about 112 limited partners over four decades. We differentiate between alternative vehicles that are GP-directed versus those where the LP has some discretion. Of...

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of portfolios of active mutual funds, ETFs and hedge funds through the lens of risk (anomaly) factors. We show that that these funds do not systematically tilt their portfolios towards profitable factors, such as high book-to-market (BM) ratios, high...

We present the first estimates of investment returns and distribution rates for U.S. non-profit endowment funds, based on a comprehensive sample of 29,762 organizations drawn from Internal Revenue Service filings for 2009-2017. Non-profit endowments badly underperform market benchmarks, with...

Measuring the performance of private equity investments (buyout and venture) has historically only been possible over long horizons because the IRR on a fund is only observable following the fund's final distribution. We propose a new approach to evaluating performance using actual prices paid...