Investor risk evaluation in the determination of management incentives in the mutual fund industry

This paper examines the way in which investors evaluate risk in deciding which mutual funds to invest. New fund investment is found to be positively related to a distributed lag of past fund performance with a strong degree of inertia. The relationship is mostly linear with significant nonlinearities at the upper (and possibly the lower) end of the performance spectrum. Investors appear to use publicly available data in a way that is consistent with the theory, giving equal weight in their decisions to the return and market risk components of the performance measure, while ignoring diversifiable risk. Finally, it is shown that improved performance in any year has a significant impact on the earnings of the management company. Because managers are rewarded on the basis of risk adjusted returns, risk neutral managers have no incentive to manipulate risk, except at very high performance levels.     

Socially responsible investment fund performance: the impact of screening intensity

Perhaps the most common criticism of socially responsible investment funds is that imposing non‐financial screens restricts investment opportunities, reduces diversification efficiencies and thereby adversely impacts performance. In this study we investigate this proposition and test whether the number of screens employed has a linear or curvilinear relation with return. Moreover, we analyse the link between screening intensity and risk. Screening intensity has no effect on unadjusted (raw) returns or idiosyncratic risk. However, we find a significant reduction in α of 70 basis points per screen using the Carhart performance model. Increased screening results in lower systematic risk – in line with managers choosing lower β stocks to minimize overall risk.     

Understanding merger incentives and outcomes in the US mutual fund industry

This paper examines the incentives of acquirers and targets in the merger market. Using data on acquisitions among mutual fund management companies from 1991 to 2004, I estimate a two-sided matching model of the merger market jointly with equations representing merger outcomes. According to the empirical investigation, although the desire to achieve a sufficient scale to attract investors is a key driver for mergers, some mergers seem to be driven by objectives other than shareholder value maximization. I find that companies that are potentially prone to misaligned incentives between owners and managers are more acquisitive than others, yet have significantly worse post-merger operating performance. I also find that these acquirers, despite their higher willingness to pay for targets, are not any more likely to match with high-quality targets, potentially due to targets’ incentive to avoid bad organizations.     

Coskewness timing ability in the mutual fund industry

The ability of mutual fund managers to time coskewness successfully can help them manage their portfolio’s exposure to potential losses and improve their fund’s performance. This study assesses whether mutual fund managers are able to manage the market exposure of their investment portfolios given a change in coskewness. We demonstrate that fund managers investing in Small Blend and Small Growth stocks possess the ability to time coskewness. On average, the fund managers of these two investment objectives increase the market exposures of their portfolios about 2.749 % and 1.340 %, respectively, based on their anticipations on future coskewness. Superiority is driven from the fact that the fund managers in small capitalization stocks are successfully able to manage the tail risk of their funds’ portfolios. The fund-by-fund results confirm that the number of individual funds succeeding in timing market skewness of the Small Blend and Small Growth investment objectives is larger than the remaining types. The main findings are robust when controlling for other types of timing ability, the periods of financial turbulence, and the construction of coskewness.     

Competition in fragmented markets: New evidence from the German banking industry in the light of the subprime crisis

Of all of the EU member states, Germany has the largest banking market. However, not all German banking institutions necessarily face fierce competition. Because the industry is highly fragmented, strict separation of the three existing banking pillars may impede competition, with negative effects on financial stability. We assess the competitive stances of 1,888 universal banks from 2001 to 2009 by using the Panzar–Rosse revenue test. We find evidence that measuring competition at an average country level does not necessarily generate valid evaluations of fragmented markets. In addition, we find no clear indication that either the particular objectives of cooperative and savings banks or the legal protection of these institutions impedes competition or discriminates against private banks. Therefore, as long as the relationship between competition and financial stability is dubious, the overall effect and the social costs or benefits of political measures that influence the structure of the German banking market are at least questionable.