Investor confidence and mutual fund performance in emerging markets

Individual investor mutual fund flows

This paper studies the relation between individuals’ mutual fund flows and fund characteristics, establishing three key results. First, consistent with tax motivations, individual investors are reluctant to sell mutual funds that have appreciated in value and are willing to sell losing funds. Second, individuals pay attention to investment costs as redemption decisions are sensitive to both exp...

Mutual fund performance, management behavior, and investor costs

We examine pure no-load funds over a 5-year period. For equity funds, trading activity is negatively related to returns. Expense ratios are not significantly related to returns. Potential capital gains exposure and tax cost ratio are positively related to return. For fixed income funds, trading activity is positively related to return. Expense ratios and tax cost ratios are negatively related t...

Managers, Investors, and Crises: Mutual Fund Strategies in Emerging Markets

Mutual Fund Choices and Investor Demographics

We test the hypothesis that investment in actively managed mutual funds is linked to investor clienteles. We document that individual investors located in less affluent, less educated, and ethnic minority neighborhoods invest more in funds with expensive load fees. They also tend to invest a disproportionate amount in funds with no minimum-balance requirements, and find fewer funds and (fewer n...

Corporate Governance, Investor Protection and Performance in Emerging Markets

Recent research studying the link between law and finance has concentrated on country-level investor protection measures and focused on differences in legal systems across countries and legal families. We use recent data on firm-level corporate governance rankings across 14 emerging markets and find that there is wide variation in firm-level governance across countries in our sample and that th...