Spillover effects in mutual fund companies

Our paper investigates spillover effects across different business segments of publicly traded financial conglomerates. We find that the investment decisions of mutual fund shareholders do not depend only on the prior performance of the mutual funds; they also depend on the prior performance of the funds’ management companies. Flows into equity and bond mutual funds increase with the prior stock price performance of the funds’ management companies after controlling for fund performance and other fund characteristics. The sensitivity of flows to the management company’s performance is not justified by the subsequent performance of the affiliated funds. The results indicate that the reputation of a company’s brand has a significant impact on the behavior of its customers. This paper was accepted by Wei Jiang, finance. </jats:p

Systemically Important or “Too Big to Fail” Financial Institutions

Although “too big to fail” (TBTF) has been a perennial policy issue, it was highlighted by the near-collapse of several large financial firms in 2008. Large financial firms that failed or required extraordinary government assistance in the recent crisis included depositories (Citigroup and Washington Mutual), government-sponsored enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), insurance companies (AIG), and investment banks (Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers).1 In many of these cases, policy makers justified the use of government resources on the grounds that the firms were “systemically important” or “too big to fail.” TBTF is the concept that a firm’s disorderly failure would cause widespread disruptions in financial markets that could not easily be contained. While the government had no explicit policy to rescue TBTF firms, several were rescued on those grounds once the crisis struck. TBTF subsequently became one of the systemic risk issues that policy makers grappled with in the wake of the recent crisis. This report discusses the economic issues raised by TBTF, broad policy options, and policy changes made by the relevant Dodd-Frank provisions. This report also discusses recent legislation addressing the TBTF issue in the 113th Congress. The report ends with an Appendix reviewing the historical experience with TBTF before and during the recent crisis

Fund family tournament and performance consequences: evidence from the UK fund industry

By applying tournament analysis to the UK Unit Trusts data, the results support significant risk shifting in the family tournament; i.e. interim winning managers tend to increase their level of risk exposure more than losing managers. It also shows that the risk-adjusted returns of the winners outperform those of the losers following the risk taking, which implies that risk altering can be regarded as an indication of managers’ superior ability. However, the tournament behaviour can still be a costly strategy for investors, since winners can be seen to beat losers in the observed returns due to the deterioration in the performance of their major portfolio holdings

Risk spillover among hedge funds: The role of redemptions and fund failures

This paper aims at analysing the mortality patterns of hedge funds over the period January 1994 to May 2008. In particular, we investigate the extent to which a spillover of risk among hedge funds through redemptions and failures of other funds has affected the probability of fund failure. We find that risk spill-over is significantly related to the failure probability of hedge funds, with the relation being more pronounced for redemptions than for failures of other funds. Hedge funds within the same investment style are adversely affected through both channels of risk spillover. In addition, we find that funds being diversified in assets and geographically have a significantly lower failure probability and are not affected by risk spillover via redemptions. JEL Classification: G11, G20, G23, G33diversification, Hedge Funds, Risk Spillover, Survival Analysis

Incomplete Investor Search: Low-expense Index Funds and Fund Flows in a Management Company

This paper shows that a low price of index funds draws investor attention to a management company, and investors' subsequent incomplete search within funds in the management company raises the flows of actively managed funds in the same management company by 10%. These spillover effects are more salient among retail investors and among share classes with direct distribution channels. At the management company level, offering low-expense index funds positively influences aggregated flows. Management companies strategically increase the expense ratios of actively managed funds after introducing low-expense index funds

Stock Market Contagion during the Global Financial Crises: Evidence from the Chilean Stock Market

The study examines evidence for the transmission of the US and EU financial crises via investor holdings into the Chilean stock market following two global financial crises, in 2008 and 2011. The study modified the models of Bekaert et al. (2014), and Dungey and Gajurel (2015) on the 2007–2009 global financial crisis and extends the period to include the European debt crisis of 2010–2011. The study produced three main contributions. First, changes in the equity holdings of retail investors were a key source of contagion following the 2008 US financial crisis. Second, investor herding during the 2011 financial crisis is shown to be low based on the co-movement of equity holdings between the four investor groups studied. Third, investor behavior during the 2011 EU crisis differs from that of the 2008 US financial crisis, which we attribute to firms in Chile adopting international financial reporting standards (IFRS) and improving their corporate governance. We compared the findings to the prior contagion studies that rely on Chilean return data to highlight the contributions to international financial research, particularly as it relates to the functioning of emerging capital markets during financial crises

EXPERIMENTS IN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

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Mutual fund investment in emerging markets - an overview

International mutual funds are one of the main channels for capital flows to emerging economies. Although mutual funds have become important contributors to financial market integration, little is known about their investment allocation, and strategies. The authors provide an overview of mutual fund activity in emerging markets. First, they describe international mutual funds'relative size, asset allocation, and country allocation. Second, they focus on fund behavior during crises, by analyzing data at the level of both investors, and fund managers. Among their findings: Equity investment in emerging markets has grown rapidly in the 1990s, much of it flowing through mutual funds. Collectively, these funds hold a sizable share of market capitalization in emerging economies. Asian, and Latin American funds achieved the fastest growth, but are smaller than domestic U.S. funds and world funds. When investigating abroad, U.S. mutual funds invest more in equity than in bonds. World funds invest mainly in developed nations (Canada, Europe, Japan, and the United States). Ten percent of their investment is in Asia, and Latin America. Mutual funds usually invest in a few countries within each region. Mutual fund investment was very responsive to the crises of the 1990s. Withdrawals from emerging markets during recent crises were large, which squares with existing evidence of financial contagion. Investments in Asian, and Latin American mutual funds are volatile. Because redemptions, and injections are large, relative to total funds under management, fund's flows are not stable. The cash held by managers during injections, and redemptions does not fluctuate significantly, so investors'actions are typically reflected in emerging market inflows, and outflows.International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Infrastructure Finance,Infrastructure Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation

An Econometric Analysis of ETF and ETF Futures in Financial and Energy Markets Using Generated Regressors

It is well known that that there is an intrinsic link between the financial and energy sectors, which can be analyzed through their spillover effects, which are measures of how the shocks to returns in different assets affect each other’s subsequent volatility in both spot and futures markets. Financial derivatives, which are not only highly representative of the underlying indices but can also be traded on both the spot and futures markets, include Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), which is a tradable spot index whose aim is to replicate the return of an underlying benchmark index. When ETF futures are not available to examine spillover effects, “generated regressors” may be used to construct both Financial ETF futures and Energy ETF futures. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the co-volatility spillovers within and across the US energy and financial sectors in both spot and futures markets, by using “generated regressors” and a multivariate conditional volatility model, namely Diagonal BEKK. The daily data used are from 1998/12/23 to 2016/4/22. The data set is analyzed in its entirety, and also subdivided into three subset time periods. The empirical results show there is a significant relationship between the Financial ETF and Energy ETF in the spot and futures markets. Therefore, financial and energy ETFs are suitable for constructing a financial portfolio from an optimal risk management perspective, and also for dynamic hedging purposes