Capacity effects and winner fund performance: the relevance and interactions of fund size and family characteristics

This study analyzes the existence of capacity effects and performance persistence for US equity mutual funds for the period from 1992 to 2007. We focus on winner funds and distinguish between capacity effects from both size and inflows and explore their interactions with two measures of family size, i.e. family total net assets under management (family TNA) and the number of funds at the family level (family breadth). The differentiation of family size allows us to analyze competing effects at the family level such as economies of scale as well as organizational complexity costs and conflicts of interest. Our empirical results confirm diseconomies of scale at the winner fund level and indicate that only small winner funds with low inflows significantly outperform the four-factor benchmark on a net return basis. There are no universal benefits from economies of scale at the family level, but our findings suggest the existence of conflicts of interest in families offering a relatively large number of funds. Small winner funds in families offering a small number of funds significantly outperform while economies of scale only materialize among extremely small winner funds. We provide detailed robustness checks for our empirical results. Overall, simply conditioning on fund size is not sufficient for selecting future outperforming funds. The results indicate that fund investors may earn positive abnormal returns when combining information on fund size with information on fund flows or fund family affiliations in their asset allocation decisions.     

AIDS-Hilfe in Afrika

Tansanische Krankenschwestern im mobilen Einsatz — Tansania ist eines der ?rmsten L?nder der Erde. Und nur in drei L?ndern weltweit gibt es mehr HIV-Infizierte. Mit internationaler Hilfe werden in vielen Regionen Versorgungsprojekte initiiert und Therapiezentren gegründet. Seit 2007 gibt es au?erdem ein nationales HIV-Programm. Dadurch gelingt es, das Tabu um HIV langsam aufzubrechen. Doch der Weg zur Eind?mmung der Epidemie ist mühsam.     

From spending to understanding: Analyzing customers by their spending behavior

In customer segmentation, a common strategy is to use individual differences as a predictor of future behavior. Recent advances in data management in large financial institutions give an unprecedented and potentially powerful source of data for identifying such differences. We show that spending data can substantially help target the direct marketing of financial products, and constitutes new information, not captured by demographics. In particular, a systematic combination of this independent source and more traditional measures can enhance the predictive power of marketing research and improve the relationship with customers as illustrated in a direct mailing selection method which substantially raises response rates.     

Some ethical dilemmas of modern banking

How ethical have recent banking practices been? We answer this question via an economic analysis. We assess the two dominant practices of the modern banking system – fractional reserves and maturity transformation – by gauging the respective rights of the relevant parties. By distinguishing the legal and economic differences between deposit and loan contracts, we determine that the practice of maturity transformation (in its various guises) is not only ethical but also serves a positive social function. The foundation of the modern banking system – the holding of fractional reserves against deposits – is, however, problematic from economic, legal and ethical perspectives. Starting from a microanalysis of money's function, a reassessment of the current laws concerning the practice is encouraged, with the aim not only to rectify economic irregularities but also to realign depositors' rights with the obligations of the banking sector.     

Rebates in a Bertrand game

We study a price competition game in which customers are heterogeneous in the rebates they get from either of two firms. We characterize the transition between competitive pricing (without rebates), mixed strategy equilibrium (for intermediate rebates), and monopoly pricing (for larger rebates).     

One‐off export events

Isolated single‐month, one‐off export transactions (observed once in a 49‐month window) turn out to be the dominant spell length in granular firm–product–destination trade data. Moreover, on average, for an export‐active firm, such one‐off events generate a significant part of foreign sales. These patterns cannot be explained by the lumpiness of trade (e.g., seasonal shipments), nor do they sit well with available trade models. To reconcile theory with the data, we introduce passive (i.e., unsolicited buyer‐side driven) exporting in addition to proactive exporting. Our empirical investigation establishes novel stylized facts on firm and destination characteristics associated with one‐off exporting.     

News or Noise? Using Twitter to Identify and Understand Company‐specific News Flow

This study presents a methodology for identifying a broad range of real‐world news events based on microblogging messages. Applying computational linguistics to a unique dataset of more than 400,000 S&P 500 stock‐related Twitter messages, we distinguish between good and bad news and demonstrate that the returns prior to good news events are more pronounced than for bad news events. We show that the stock market impact of news events differs substantially across different categories.