Financial economics and corporate governance have long focused on the agency problems between corporate managers and shareholders that result from the dispersion of ownership in large publicly traded ...corporations. In this paper, we focus on how the rise of institutional investors over the past several decades has transformed the corporate landscape and, in turn, the governance problems of the modern corporation. The rise of institutional investors has led to increased concentration of equity ownership, with most public corporations now having a substantial proportion of their shares held by a small number of institutional investors. At the same time, these institutions are controlled by investment managers, which have their own agency problems vis-à-vis their own beneficial investors. We develop an analytical framework for understanding the agency problems of institutional investors, and apply it to examine the agency problems and behavior of several key types of investment managers, including those that manage mutual funds—both index funds and actively managed funds—and activist hedge funds. We show that index funds have especially poor incentives to engage in stewardship activities that could improve governance and increase value. Activist hedge funds have substantially better incentives than managers of index funds or active mutual funds. While their activities may partially compensate, we show that they do not provide a complete solution for the agency problems of other institutional investors.
To rationalize the well-known underperformance of the average actively managed mutual fund, we exploit the fact that retail funds in different market segments compete for different types of ...investors. Within the segment of funds marketed directly to retail investors, we show that flows chase risk-adjusted returns, and that funds respond by investing more in active management. Importantly, within this direct-sold segment, we find no evidence that actively managed funds underperform index funds. In contrast, we show that actively managed funds sold through brokers face a weaker incentive to generate alpha and significantly underperform index funds.
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) represent one of the most important financial innovations in decades. An ETF is an investment vehicle, with a specific architecture that typically seeks to track the ...performance of a specific index. The first US-listed ETF, the SPDR, was launched by State Street in January 1993 and seeks to track the S&P 500 index. It is still today the largest ETF by far, with assets of $178 billion. Following the introduction of the SPDR, new ETFs were launched tracking broad domestic and international indices, and more specialized sector, region, or country indexes. In recent years, ETFs have grown substantially in assets, diversity, and market significance, including substantial increases in assets in bond ETFs and so-called “smart beta” funds that track certain investment strategies often used by actively traded mutual funds and hedge funds. In this paper, we begin by describing the structure and organization of exchange-traded funds, contrasting them with mutual funds, which are close relatives of exchange-traded funds, describing the differences in how ETFs operate and their potential advantages in terms of liquidity, lower expenses, tax efficiency, and transparency. We then turn to concerns over whether the rise in ETFs may raise unexpected risks for investors or greater instability in financial markets. While concerns over financial fragility are worth serious consideration, some of the common concerns are overstated, and for others, a number of rules and practices are already in place that offer a substantial margin of safety.
We investigate the dual notions that “dumb money” exacerbates well-known stock return anomalies and “smart money” attenuates these anomalies. We find that aggregate flows to mutual funds (dumb money) ...appear to exacerbate cross-sectional mispricing, particularly for growth, accrual, and momentum anomalies. In contrast, hedge fund flows (smart money) appear to attenuate aggregate mispricing. Our results suggest that aggregate flows to mutual funds can have real adverse allocation effects in the stock market and that aggregate flows to hedge funds contribute to the correction of cross-sectional mispricing.
We propose a new method to model hedge fund risk exposures using relatively highfrequency conditioning variables. In a large sample of funds, we find substantial evidence that hedge fund risk ...exposures vary across and within months, and that capturing within-month variation is more important for hedge funds than for mutual funds. We consider different within-month functional forms, and uncover patterns such as day-of-the-month variation in risk exposures. We also find that changes in portfolio allocations, rather than in the risk exposures of the underlying assets, are the main drivers of hedge funds' risk exposure variation.
Corporate bond mutual funds engage in liquidity transformation, raising concerns among academics and policy makers that large redemptions will lead to asset fire sales. We find little evidence, ...however, that bond fund redemptions drive fire sale price pressure after controlling for time-varying issuer-level information that could also affect funds’ trading decisions, using a novel identification strategy that exploits same-issuer bonds held by funds with differing outflows. We attribute our findings, which contrast with those found for equity funds, to funds’ liquidity management strategies. Bond funds maintain significant liquidity cushions and selectively trade liquid assets, allowing them to absorb investor redemption risk without excessively liquidating corporate bonds, even during the 2008 financial crisis.
Connected Stocks ANTÓN, MIGUEL; POLK, CHRISTOPHER
The Journal of finance (New York),
June 2014, Volume:
69, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
We connect stocks through their common active mutual fund owners. We show that the degree of shared ownership forecasts cross-sectional variation in return correlation, controlling for exposure to ...systematic return factors, style and sector similarity, and many other pair characteristics. We argue that shared ownership causes this excess comovement based on evidence from a natural experiment—the 2003 mutual fund trading scandal. These results motivate a novel cross-stock-reversal trading strategy exploiting information contained in ownership connections. We show that long-short hedge fund index returns covary negatively with this strategy, suggesting these funds may exacerbate this excess comovement.
Using a comprehensive list of terrorist attacks over three decades, we find that aggregate investor risk aversion inversely relates to terrorist activity in the United States. A one standard ...deviation increase in the number of attacks each month leads to a $75.09 million drop in aggregate flows to equity funds and a $56.81 million increase to government bond funds. Tests on alternative channels further suggest that the shift in aggregate risk aversion is driven mainly by an emotional shock rather than changes in wealth or the outside environment. We also investigate possible alternate explanations for reduced flows to risky assets. Our evidence is consistent with a fear-induced increase in aggregate risk aversion.
More than 40 percent of the world’s population has access to the internet, with new users coming online every day. Among the poorest 20 percent of households, nearly 7 out of 10 have a mobile phone. ...This report finds that traditional development challenges are preventing the digital revolution from fulfilling its transformative potential. For many people, today’s increase in access to digital technologies brings more choice and greater convenience. While this is great progress, many are still left out because they do not have access to digital technologies. To deliver universal digital access, one must invest in infrastructure and pursue reforms that bring greater competition to telecommunications markets, promote public-private partnerships, and yield effective regulation. The report concludes that the full benefits of the information and communications transformation will not be realized unless countries continue to improve their business climate, invest in people’s education and health, and promote good governance. The World Bank Group are already working with clients to promote competitive business environments, increase accountability, and upgrade education and skills-development systems to prepare people for the jobs of the future.
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