Geographical Proximity and Mutual Funds' Proxy Voting Behavior

This paper examines the influence of geographical proximity on mutual fund proxy voting decisions. Using mutual fund proxy voting data for the sample period July 1, 2003 to June 30, 2004, we find that fund managers vote more in favor of management of locally headquartered firms. The results are strong for proposals related to executive compensation, anti‐takeover provisions, social and political issues. We provide evidence to show that bias in proxy voting is not being driven by informational advantage; voting bias is prevalent in small as well as large size companies. Additionally, the voting pattern suggests that geographical proximity does not facilitate in better corporate monitoring as revealed in their voting decisions. We find that local fund managers vote more favorably in those proposals which do not increase shareholders' wealth and rights. Our results suggest that familiarity and social interaction between fund managers and firm executives located in the same geographic area might explain the local bias in mutual fund proxy voting behavior. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Learning about individual managers’ performance in UK pension funds: The importance of specialization

This study examines the performance of managers over time, as well as its persistence, taking into account both manager characteristics and market conditions. Applying parametric and non-parametric methodologies, we examine a sample of UK equity pension fund managers. Our results help to understand the importance of manager assignments in the industry and reveal the importance and benefits of management specialization. We find certain manager performance persistence, revealing that some managers are better than others and possess superior investment skills. Additionally, we find that managers achieve better results when they run a single fund or one investment-objective funds, which allows managers to focus on specific tasks. Nonetheless, manager performance varies with market conditions and highlights managers’ different skills. Specialist managers perform better in bullish markets, and generalists perform better in bearish periods.     

Competition and managerial autonomy

I formalize and challenge the idea that competition forces managers to make better choices, thus favoring managerial autonomy in decision making. If managers care about keeping their position or avoiding interference, and they can make strategic choices that affect both expected firm profits and their riskiness, even if competition at first pushes the manager towards profit maximization, further increases in competition might lead him to take excessive risks. To curb this possibility, the principal owner optimally reduces the degree of autonomy granted to the manager. Hence, higher levels of managerial autonomy are more likely for intermediate levels of competition.     

何种特征属性决定了基金经理的业绩提升

本文研究了基金经理特征对其业绩的影响及解释力,发现基金经理的业绩具有一定的持续性,其职业稳定性对基金业绩的提升是必要的,在基金公司内部出于管理或人事安排的需要进行频繁的岗位轮换或人员搭配往往不能起到理想的预期效果,但基金经理来自其他基金公司的从业经历却有助于其业绩提升;一定的证券从业经验对基金经理的业绩提升是必要的,但并不意味着从业时间越长,就能获得越好的业绩表现;没有证据表明基金经理学历、历任基金经理的持续时间对其业绩提升有显著的贡献,但性别对基金业绩有着显著的影响。研究表明基金公司在选拔和任用基金经理时,秉持“业绩至上”的原则是必要的,但不能过度沉溺于“经验至上”的迷信,不同经验对基金经理的业绩提升有着不同的影响,需要区别对待。     

Examining the behavior of renewable‐energy fund investors

Mutual fund investors could contribute to sustainable development by encouraging fund managers to channel their savings into the funding of sustainable energy projects adopted by firms. This study examines whether renewable‐energy investors take into account financial and/or nonfinancial factors when making the decision to invest in a specific fund, comparing their investment behavior with that of black‐energy and conventional investors. To this end, we have gathered information about 4,368 mutual funds (76 renewable‐energy funds, 109 black‐energy funds, and 4,183 conventional mutual funds) from January 2007 to December 2017. For this sample, we adopt a panel‐data approach with Petersen's standard errors clustered by fund and year. Our results indicate that renewable‐energy fund investors are less sensitive to past financial performance than are black‐energy and conventional fund investors, indicating that the former derive their utility from nonfinancial attributes whereas black‐energy investors derive their utility from a conditional multiattribute and conventional fund investors derive their utility from financial attributes.     

Mutual fund performance: The decision quality and capital magnet efficiencies

This study employs a two-stage network data envelopment analysis model to analyze the decision quality and capital magnet efficiencies of 155 mutual funds in Taiwan during the period 2007–2016. The empirical results show that fund managers improved their decision quality; however, their capital magnet efficiency declined. This study also found 10 mutual funds performing in decision quality and capital magnet efficiencies, from which practical suggestions are provided to investors. Finally, this study constructs a market competition matrix to help fund managers (and investors) improve their operating and portfolio performance, plus resource allocation.     

Threshold effect of scale and skill in active mutual fund management

In this paper, we apply threshold estimation techniques to study the size-performance relationship in the US mutual fund industry. Existing studies have found diseconomies of scale, and we add our contribution to this by considering possible non-linear decreasing returns to scale caused by fund age and manager tenure. We find significant threshold effects of both fund age and manager tenure at approximately three to four years in the size-performance relationship. Compared with younger funds, older funds have more severe decreasing returns to scale as the industry size increases.     

基金业绩影响因素研究——基于基金经理特征视角

通过对基金经理特征与基金业绩关系的实证研究考察了年龄、性别、任期、工作经历、银行背景、教育背景、资格证书等经理特征对基金业绩的影响。实证结果表明,年龄、任期、MBA与基金业绩负相关,银行经历与基金业绩正相关,博士学历反而没有硕士学历的经理基金业绩好,女性经理业绩强于男性,工作经历对业绩影响不大,CFA证书持有者业绩略好,金融专业背景经理业绩强于其他专业。研究还发现,硕士毕业于国内排名前十位高校的基金经理管理的业绩,获得比其他经理管理的基金高出13.6%-15.4%的投资收益率。研究结论表明,较高的人力资本和社会资本有利于基金业绩的提升,而经验资本影响不大。     

New insights into mutual fund brokerage commissions

Using data collected from equity mutual fund reports filed by single-fund registrants to the Securities and Exchange Commission, I study the determinants of brokerage commissions paid by fund managers when they buy or sell securities and investigate the role these commissions play in fund performance. Consistent with related studies, my results from cross-sectional analyses reveal that higher portfolio turnover funds are associated with higher commissions and larger funds incur lower commissions, as well as the positive relation between expense ratios and commissions. This positive relation is puzzling as most commissions include “soft dollars” for payments of products and services that should be already covered by the costs reported under expense ratios. However, once I take into account unobservable fund heterogeneity, I find that higher expense ratio funds do not necessarily pay higher commissions. Further, controlling for whether a fund increased commission payments as the result of flow-induced trading, I show that the underperformance related to brokerage commissions documented in the literature is attributable (at least partly) to higher level of fund flows.     

Investment and financing choices by time-inconsistent managers

This paper provides an analytically tractable continuous-time model in which a time-inconsistent manager can divert part of the firm’s cash flows as private benefits at the expense of outside shareholders. We endogenously determine the investment scale, investment threshold, optimal coupon and default threshold under managerial discretion. We demonstrate that time-inconsistent managers each have a trade-off between the timing and scale of investment.Among a number of important implications, by exploring agency costs of equity as deviations from the investment and financing policies that maximize equity value, our analysis reveals that a certain degree of time inconsistency in managerial preferences decreases the agency costs of equity. We also find that a naive manager more severely distorts the investment and financing policies than does a sophisticated manager, which leads to higher agency costs of equity. Finally, we document that the impacts of corporate governance variables, such as the managers’ property parameter and/or the level of managers’ ownership, depend on the managers’ beliefs regarding their future time-inconsistent behavior; this prediction provides novel empirical tests.     

Managerial Incentives for Takeovers

The paper studies managerial incentives in a model where managers choose product market strategies and make takeover decisions. The equilibrium contract includes an incentive to increase the firm's sales, under either quantity or price Competition. This result contrasts with previous findings in the literature, and hinges on the fact that when managers are more aggressive, rival firms earn lower profits and thus are willing to sell out at a lower price. However, as a side effect of such a contract, the manager might undertake unprofitable takeovers.     

The Incentives for Innovative Activity in the Managerial Firm

This paper discusses the incentives for innovation by a manager‐led firm. In particular, it is investigated how remuneration practices influence the choice of a risky project. In the first place, a dynamic model with uncertainty is used to determine the optimal employment level with exogenous growth and risk. In the second part of the paper, growth and risk are explained by R&D expenditures. Optimal investment expenditures for R&D are derived for (i) the profit‐maximizing firm and (ii) the managerial firm, where the manager receives a fixed salary as well as a variable share of profits. If risk neutrality is assumed, then no difference exists. However, if risk aversion is considered, the managerial firm will invest more into R&D than the owner‐led company. Size‐related salaries are an additional reason for higher expenditures of R&D by managers. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

公募基金内部羊群行为研究

以往对公募基金羊群行为的研究聚焦于宏观层面不同基金公司所持股票组合的相似性,而该研究则从微观视角研究了羊群行为:(1)单个公募基金公司所管理的多个基金相互模仿投资策略所呈现的羊群行为;(2)基金经理的交易行为所呈现的羊群行为。使用LSV模型测量2010—2019年多个公募基金公司内部的羊群行为,发现同个公募基金公司所管理的多个不同基金存在相互模仿投资策略的羊群行为,程度高于宏观层面不同公募基金之间相互模仿的羊群行为。此外,还发现基金经理的买入卖出交易行为存在羊群效应。研究从新的视角检验了微观层面的羊群行为,为基金公司加强内部管理、避免基金经理跟风投资造成风险聚集提供参考。     

Mutual fund flows and window-dressing

We use a sequential game to analyze an agency problem in the mutual fund industry where a representative fund manager considers window-dressing his portfolio holdings for the purpose of attracting fund flows from a representative investor. The manager is motivated to window-dress to improve the investor's perception of managerial skill which may positively affect fund flows in the next period. However, the investor may suspect window-dressing and thus downgrade perceived managerial skill. The model supports a Bayesian Nash equilibrium where the manager window-dresses only when receiving a low return in the first period and the investor withdraws funds only when observing low returns in both periods. Consequently, we show that window-dressing is a rational behavior even when fund outflows may result.     

Overinvestment and fraud

We analyze the interactions between two managerial tasks: investing and revealing information. We assume that a manager can invest influencing the firm’s quality, then he reports this quality to investors. Whenever truthful reporting is not an equilibrium, the manager has incentives to overinvest relative to shareholders. Therefore, the potential for market manipulation is the key in understanding investment policy; it is the desire to manipulate prices that leads to inefficient investment. Also, more manipulation occurs when the manager is in control, so prices are less informative. Finally, we show that the manager is better off with an exogenous reporting policy.     

股票基金红利再投资比例的实证研究

开放式基金"红利再投资比例"指的是基金分红时,投资者以红利再投资方式进行的收益分配占总收益分配的比例。红利再投资比例的研究可以为基金制定正确的分红策略提供依据。文章通过对股票型开放式基金红利再投资比例的研究,发现基金份额、基金存续时间与基金红利再投资比例正相关。这说明基金持有人对基金管理人越有信心,基金持有人投资基金的时间越长,则选择红利再投资的可能性就越大。     

Do investors still benefit from international diversification with investment constraints?

This paper empirically investigates the potential benefits of international diversification for the U.S. investor with various investment constraints from both long-term and time-rolling perspectives. While the addition of portfolio bounds makes asset allocation more feasible, our findings suggest that adding short-selling and over-weighting constraints reduce but do not completely eliminate the diversification benefits of international investment. The over-time analyses show that diversifying portfolios internationally is still beneficial even though financial markets are becoming more integrated. The out-of-sample test suggests that the Markowitz model does not necessarily realize improved mean–variance efficiency but demonstrates risk reduction. The significant time variation in optimal asset allocation implies the necessity for the fund manager to rebalance international portfolio dynamically.     

证券投资基金的委托-代理关系研究

本文对证券投资基金当事人之间的委托—代理关系进行了研究,指出在不存在道德风险和逆向选择的条件下,基金投资者和基金管理人、基金托管人之间利益的一致性,基金管理人和基金托管人的报酬应取决于他们努力的成果。最后讨论了在信息极端不对称的条件下基金管理人和基金托管人成为利益共同体的可能性及应采取的措施。     

我国基金家族风险调整行为的实证研究

本文选取我国2008年12月31日之前成立的偏股型基金,研究了2006年1月1日至2009年12月31日期间,基金家族内部基金经理根据每年前期家族内部业绩排名而对后期风险进行调整的行为,发现在基金家族内部前7个月排名靠后的基金,后期会显著增大投资组合风险,说明我国基金家族内部存在基金竞赛,即前期排名靠后的基金经理后期倾向于选择高风险高收益的投资组合。进一步研究发现,这种风险选择行为与基金家族的大小呈正相关关系,即大家族内部基金竞赛行为更显著。     

Performance evaluation with portfolio holdings information

This paper surveys recent academic research that uses portfolio holdings to evaluate the performance of an asset manager. These approaches mitigate the benchmark-choice problem of Roll (1978), as well as providing a much more precise attribution of the sources of manager returns. Although originally developed with U.S. data, recent papers have applied these approaches to European, Asian, and Australian equity managers. All surveyed approaches can be integrated into the Brinson, Hood, and Beebower (1986) attribution method, if we allow the composition of the benchmark portfolio to evolve through time according to the observed portfolio holdings of an asset manager.