Takeover targets often experience substantial share price appreciations around public announcements of mergers and acquisitions. We analyze hedge fund and mutual fund holdings around takeover announcements to assess the differences in investment strategies across institutions. Our results...

Mortgage cramdown enabled bankruptcy judges to discharge the underwater portion of a mortgage during Chapter 13 bankruptcy before the Supreme Court disallowed this practice in 1993. We exploit the random assignment of cases to judges to quantify the ex-post effects of Chapter 13 bankruptcy over...

Investments in international fixed income securities are exposed to significant currency risks. We collect novel data on mutual fund currency derivatives and document that around 90% of U.S. international fixed income funds use currency forwards to manage their foreign exchange exposure. Funds'...

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has historically been the most quoted stock index in the United States. It has several unique features. It uses price weights, it ignores cash dividend payments, and it also treats stock dividends, rights issues, and other corporate actions inconsistently. We...

We show that mutual funds worldwide provide substantial international exposure through their domestic holdings of multinationals. An average domestic fund's international exposure increases by 32 percentage points when we consider international corporate diversification. We find that funds with...

We examine the effects of a 2012 regulatory reform that mandated fee and performance disclosures for the investment options in 401(k) plans. We show that participants became significantly more attentive to expense ratios and short-term performance after the reform. The disclosure effects are...

Recordkeepers in DC pension plans are often paid indirectly in the form of revenue sharing from third-party funds on the menu. We show that these arrangements affect the investment menu of 401(k) plans. Revenue-sharing funds are more likely to be added to the menu and are less likely to be...

Frequent, yet uninformed, fund flows in Chilean pension plans generate substantial trading in currency markets due to the high allocation to international securities. These non-fundamental flows have a significant impact on the Chilean peso, which is estimated to have a relatively low price...

This paper investigates whether investors are compensated for the tax burden of equity securities. Effective tax rates on equity securities vary due to frequent tax reforms and due to persistent differences in propensities to pay dividends. The paper finds an economically and statistically...

The effective tax rate on equity securities has fluctuated considerably in the U.S. between 1917-2004. This study investigates whether personal taxes on equity securities are related to stock valuations using the time-series variation in tax burdens. The paper finds an economically and...