We use mutual fund flows as a measure of individual investor sentiment for different stocks, and find that high sentiment predicts low future returns. Fund flows are dumb money–by reallocating across different mutual funds, retail investors reduce their wealth in the long run. This dumb money effect is related to the value effect: high sentiment stocks tend to be growth stocks. High sentiment a...

We study optimal fiscal policy in a small open economy (SOE) with sovereign and private default risk. The SOE’s government uses linear taxation to fund exogenous expenditures and uses public debt to inter-temporally allocate tax distortions. We characterize a class of environments in which the tax on labor goes to zero in the long run, while the tax on capital income may be non-zero, reversing ...

In a model with both issues of sovereign debtor moral hazard and creditor coordination under incomplete information, we show that the resulting con‡ict between ex ante and interim e¢ ciency limits the welfare impact of strengthening CACs. Conditional on default, we show that an interim e¢ cient CAC threshold exists and improving creditor coordination results in welfare gains. However, when ex a...

The purpose of this study is to examine the pricing behavior and the discount of U.S. withinfamily closed-end funds merger, i.e., mergers between acquiring and target funds belonging to same fund families. There is no specific research on this issue since limited number of previous studies examines the determinants of open-end fund mergers and their subsequent wealth impact on shareholders of t...

Sovereign risk premia have risen sharply in several European countries, contributed to increased credit spreads in the private sector. If monetary policy cannot offset these credit spreads because it is constrained by the zero lower bound, sovereign risk threatens macroeconomic stability: private-sector beliefs of a weakening economy may become self-fulfilling. In this paper, we put forward a t...

Relative wealth concerns can affect risk-taking behavior, as the payoff to a marginal dollar of wealth depends on the wealth of others. In particular, status concerns that arise endogenously due to competition in the marriage market can lead to greater risktaking if the more desirable mates prefer wealthier suitors. We evaluate empirically the importance of this effect in a high-stakes setting ...

This study analyzes IQ’s influence on mutual fund choice. Using a comprehensive dataset of Finnish males, it finds that high-IQ investors are less likely to own balanced funds, actively managed funds, and funds marketed through a retail network. This behavior tends to reduce highIQ investors’ fund fees. Moreover, within each asset class and service category, and controlling for other investor a...

We examine the unique nature of agency problems within publicly traded family firms by investigating the earnings management decision of dominant family owners relative to nonfamily. To do so, we draw upon literature demonstrating that family owners are loss averse with respect to the family’s socioemotional wealth (SEW), or the affective endowment derived from firm ownership and control. Our t...