We build a model of mutual fund competition in which a fraction of investors, unsophisticated, exhibit a preference for familiarity, while sophisticated investors are free of familiarity bias. Funds differ in two dimensions: quality and familiarity. Unsophisticated investors exhibit varying...

This paper investigates the direct link between institutional investors' trading activity and comovement in stock liquidity using data on actual institutional investors' trades. We fi nd strong empirical evidence that stocks that are highly traded by institutions exhibit commonality in...

Using data on Spanish mutual funds, we show that bank-affiliated funds provide funding support to their parent company via purchases of bonds in the primary market. Funding from affiliated funds increases when it is most valuable, i.e., in times of financial stress and to riskier banks with...

Identifying outperforming mutual funds ex-ante is a notoriously difficult task. We use machine learning to exploit fund characteristics and construct portfolios of equity funds that earn positive and significant out-of-sample alpha net of all costs. In contrast, alphas of portfolios selected...

We propose a two-stage procedure to estimate conditional beta pricing models that allows for flexibility in the dynamics of asset betas and market prices of risk (MPR). First, conditional betas are estimated nonparametrically for each asset and period using the time-series of previous data....