Publications
Abstract:
We study outsourcing relationships among international asset management firms. We find that in companies that manage both outsourced and inhouse funds, inhouse funds outperform outsourced funds by 0.85% annually (57% of the expense ratio). We attribute this result to preferential treatment of inhouse funds via the preferential allocation of IPOs, trading opportunities and cross-trades, especially at times when inhouse funds face steep outflows and require liquidity. We explain preferential treatment with agency problems: it increases with the subcontractor's market power and the difficulty of monitoring the subcontractor and decreases with the subcontractor's amount of parallel inhouse activity.
Abstract:
In their foreign portfolio allocations, international mutual funds overweight industries that are comparatively large in their domestic stock market. Aggregate excess foreign industry allocations are sizeable, on average amounting to over 100% for the largest domestic industries. While this foreign industry bias partly reflects familiarity-based motives, a large body of evidence on investment and performance patterns is on the whole remarkably consistent with a specialized learning motive contributing to the bias. This suggests that differences in industry structures across domestic stock markets proxy for international information asymmetries.
Abstract:
We study the link between information barriers in global markets and the organizational form of asset management. Fund families outsource funds in which they are at an informational disadvantage to generate performance. Using a structural model of self-selection, we endogenize the outsourcing decision and estimate positive gains from outsourcing of 414 basis points per month, thereby reconciling underperformance of outsourced funds with performance maximization by fund families. The gains from outsourcing provide a novel proxy for the information barriers that segment global financial markets: the more segmented the underlying markets where the funds invest, the larger the gains from outsourcing.
Abstract:
We exploit the merger between BlackRock and Barclays Global Investors to study how changes in expected ownership concentration affect the investment behavior of funds and the cross-section of stocks worldwide. We find that funds with open-end structures and a large exposure to commonly-held stocks begin avoiding these stocks following the merger announcement. This leads to a permanent change in the composition of institutional ownership and a negative price and liquidity impact. We confirm these results in a large sample of global asset management mergers. Our findings suggest that market participants act strategically in response to changes in expected financial fragility.
This paper received media coverage from The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, The Economist, Spiegel, Ignites, Fund Fire, CIO, Top1000funds.com, The Business Times Singapore, 929, Handelsblatt, and Manager Magazin.
My co-author Massimo Massa was interviewed on the paper by CNBC.
Abstract:
Why do so few mutual fund families launch so many funds and styles around the world? We argue that launching numerous funds on an increasingly granular style grid allows incumbent families to congest the product space and deter market entry. Key to this argument is the persistently low dimensionality of the mutual fund product space, a fact we establish by analyzing the names of over 40,000 equity funds sold in 91 countries between 1931 and 2015. Over time, the strategy of filling up the style grid has led to the dominance of few families offering large, granular, and similar fund menus.
Abstract:
We study human capital synergies in asset management mergers that stem from the improved ability to assign fund managers to more specialized tasks in larger firms. More specialized task assignment allows rotated managers to focus on their investment expertise and leads to incremental $54 million of value added per deal per year on average. The effects are concentrated in mergers that lead to a large increase in firm size and in funds whose management appears less specialized prior to the merger. Our results provide direct evidence on the role of firms in the assignment of tasks to fund managers.
This paper received media coverage from 929.
Abstract:
We highlight an important but overlooked characteristic of financial fragility: "fragile" stocks command higher liquidity. This reduces their sensitivity to corporate actions with price impact and affects the firms' incentives to engage in such actions. We show that fragile firms have lower share repurchases, issue more equity, and invest more. We establish causality by relating changes in corporate actions to exogenous changes in fragility induced by mergers of asset managers. Our results suggest that financial fragility has direct but unexpected real implications for corporate actions.
Abstract:
Using global mutual fund and American Depositary Receipt (ADR) data, we test if funds strategically trade cross-listed firms’ equity shares in the most liquid trading location. We find that especially funds that score high on traditional skill measures exhibit a liquidity-based trading venue preference. We identify an informed trading motive as the most likely driver for such behaviour rather than preferences based on geographic, economic, cultural, or governance motives. Thus, liquidity picking is associated with fund outperformance and stock selection ability that is not limited to only cross-listed firms. Our tests directly support theories of informed trading in a multi-market setting.
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Working Papers
Abstract:
Can relationship lending be sustained in public financial markets? We use firms' call decisions as a laboratory to study this question. After a fixed-price call forces existing bondholders to sell their bonds back at below market prices, existing bondholders are far less likely to participate in firms' subsequent bond issuances. The effects are strongest for the largest fund families, such that the call leads to a reduction in their total ownership of these firms' bonds. In turn, firms delay calling their bonds when they have more large fund families in their bondholder base. Finally, firms' borrowing costs are affected by the reputation they develop from their past call decisions. Our results reveal the importance of relationship lending in bond markets and show how firms' financial policies affect these relationships.
- Why Enter the ETF Market with Mutual Fund Managers?
 (joint with M. Luo).
Abstract:
When entering the ETF market, about 50% of mutual fund firms use active mutual fund managers to oversee their new ETFs. Firms select active managers based on their institutional client relationships, not their investment skill, to take on such roles. Institutional clients then withdraw assets from mutual funds but provide important seed capital to the new ETFs. This allows firms to grow their ETF business faster compared to firms who employ dedicated ETF managers and to mitigate the risk of a slow but prolonged total loss of assets under management when not entering the ETF market at all
- Contagion and Decoupling in Intermediated Financial Markets

Abstract:
I analyze the interplay between fundamental and intermediation risk in a multi-asset dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents. Agents differ in their level of direct access to investment opportunities. Intermediation relationships are formed to overcome limited market access. Intermediation risk is captured via frictions in the relationships between agents that introduce fragility into asset prices. Asset prices are fragile when they have a concentrated investor base making them dependent on the fortunes of a few investors. In contrast, a non-concentrated investor base makes asset prices resilient with respect to intermediation risk. But not all assets with a concentrated investor base are fragile. I identify fundamental characteristics that induce resilience in assets with a common concentrated investor base. These characteristics lead to portfolio rebalancing within the common investor base that makes some assets resilient and renders others fragile in the presence of intermediation risk. Likewise, in a multi-asset framework, assets that are resilient due to a broad investor base are not completely immune to the fragility experienced by other assets. In a dynamic context, fragile assets tend to experience contagion whereas resilient assets tend to decouple whenever the intermediation frictions are severe. I argue that an understanding of the dynamic behavior of asset prices requires an understanding of fundamental and intermediation risk as well as the interaction between the two.
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