Implication of Regret on Mutual Fund Managers' Risk-Shifting Decision

Abstract

We investigate whether regret can explain mutual fund managers' risk-shifting behavior. We propose a theoretical framework by introducing a modi_ed utility function for mutual fund managers who are both risk averse and regret averse. The empirical tests of the proposed framework imply that mutual fund managers who perform worse than their peers (i.e., who exhibit return-regret) tend to have a positive risk-shifting, whereas those who have a higher portfolio volatility (i.e., who exhibit variance-regret) tend to have a negative risk-shifting behavior over the next period. Furthermore, we document that the e_ect of variance regret is more signi_cant for institutional funds than for retail funds. Finally, when considering fund ows, the return-regret e_ect is more signifcant than the variance-regret e_ect, conrming that investors' outows are mainly due fund managers' bad performance relative to their peers. The results are robust to using alternative measures of regret based on funds' potential benchmarks