Using local natural disasters as a quasi-experimental setting, we show that heightened distress risk in shocked firms drives both these firms and their unshocked competitors to cut profit margins by about 0.8 percentage points. These reductions stem from predatory pricing, inventory liquidation,...

Active equity funds care about fund size, affected by fund flows that obey a strong factor structure with the common component responding to macroeconomic shocks. Funds hedge against common flows by tilting their portfolios toward low-flow-beta stocks, while household/retail and index investors...

Investment fund managers make asset allocation decisions on behalf of a significant segment of US households. To elucidate the incentives they operate under, as well as the income and career risks they face, we construct a unique and novel dataset, which encompasses detailed information on the...