The recent financial crisis and historical record suggest important lessons about the design of national pension systems. First, wide fluctuation in asset returns makes it hard for well-informed savers to select a saving rate or a sensible investment strategy for DC pensions. Workers who follow...

Households participating in financial markets pay attention to inflation news when making their investment decisions, even in an environment of mostly low and stable inflation. ETFs and open-ended mutual funds holding Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) receive inflows from retail...

I provide evidence that fund managers who overweight firms with the most differentiated products ('monopolies') exhibit a superior risk-adjusted performance. This is consistent with information advantages due to a better understanding of qualitative information on a firm's competitive...

We study daily money market mutual fund flows at the individual share class level during the crisis of September 2008. The empirical approach that we apply to this fine granularity of data brings new insights into the investor and portfolio holding characteristics that are conducive to run-risk...

We study whether investors' demographic similarity to CEOs affects their investment decisions. Mutual fund managers are found to overweight firms led by CEOs who resemble them in terms of age, ethnicity and gender. This finding is robust to excluding educational and local ties and is supported...

Mutual fund investors are supposed to make long-term investments instead of striving for quick fortunes. However, the dynamics of funds' ability to generate abnormal returns over their lifetime is still an unattended issue. This paper provides evidence on the liability of newness and liability...

We document that the speed of information dissemination within mutual fund families positively affects the performance of member funds. This suggests that the resulting benefits of higher information precision far outweigh free-riding costs associated with fast internal dissemination. The...

We analyze what a second business degree reveals about the investment behavior of professional investors. Specifically, we compare performance, risk, and style of equity mutual fund managers having a CFA designation and an MBA degree to managers with only one of these qualifications. We document...

In this experimental study we examine the impact of self-fulfilling prophecies on financial ratings. According to theoretical models like Kuhner (2001), rating agencies are more likely to reveal their private information if their rating can not become self-fulfilling from an ex-post point of...