Recent cases of hedge fund fraud have caused large losses for investors and have fueled the debate regarding the ability of regulators to oversee the industry. This article proposes a set of performance flags, based on suspicious patterns in returns, as indicators of a heightened risk of fraud....

We show that familiarity affects the portfolio decisions of mutual fund managers. Controlling for fund location, funds overweight stocks from their managers' home states by 12% compared with their peers. In team-managed funds, home-state overweighting is 37% larger than the fund location effect....

We show that familiarity affects the portfolio decisions of mutual fund managers. Controlling for fund location, funds overweight stocks from their managers' home states by 12% compared with their peers. In team-managed funds, home-state overweighting is 37% larger than the fund location effect....

Recent cases of hedge fund fraud have caused large losses for investors and have fueled the debate regarding the ability of regulators to oversee the industry. This article proposes a set of performance flags, based on suspicious patterns in returns, as indicators of a heightened risk of fraud....

This article examines the capital structure implications of defined benefit corporate pension plans. The magnitude of the liabilities arising from these pension plans is substantial. We show that leverage ratios for firms with pension plans are about 35% higher when pension assets and...

Mutual funds change their risk levels significantly over time. Risk shifting might be caused by ill-motivated trades of unskilled or agency-prone fund managers who trade to increase their personal compensation. Alternatively, risk shifting might occur when skilled fund managers trade to take...

Despite extensive disclosure requirements, mutual fund investors do not observe all actions of fund managers. We estimate the impact of unobserved actions on fund returns using the return gap--the difference between the reported fund return and the return on a portfolio that invests in the...

Hedge funds have become important investors in public companies raising equity privately. Hedge funds tend to finance companies that have poor fundamentals and pronounced information asymmetries. To compensate for these shortcomings, hedge funds protect themselves by requiring substantial...