Firms with higher asset growth rates subsequently experience lower stock returns in international equity markets, consistent with the U.S. evidence. This negative effect of asset growth on returns is stronger in more developed capital markets and markets where stocks are more efficiently priced, but is unrelated to country characteristics representing limits to arbitrage, investor protection, and accounting quality. The evidence suggests that the cross-sectional relation between asset growth and stock return is more likely due to an optimal investment effect than due to overinvestment, market timing, or other forms of mispricing.

Previous research finds insignificant market-timing ability for mutual funds using tests based on fund returns. The return-based tests, however, are subject to the “artificial timing” bias. In this paper, we propose and implement new measures of market timing based on mutual fund holdings. Our holdings-based measures do not suffer from the artificial timing bias. We find that, on average, actively managed U.S. domestic equity funds have positive timing ability. Market timing funds use non-public information to predict market returns, tend to have high industry concentration, large fund size, a tilt toward small-cap stocks, and are active in industry rotation.

Open banking (OB) empowers bank customers to share their financial transaction data with fintechs and other banks. New cross-country data shows 49 countries adopted OB policies, privacy preferences predict policy adoption, and adoption spurs fintech entry. UK microdata shows that OB enables: (i) consumers to access both financial advice and credit; (ii) SMEs to establish new lending relationships. In a calibrated model, OB universally improves welfare through entry and product improvements when used for advice. When used for credit, OB promotes entry and competition by reducing adverse selection, but higher prices for costlier or privacy-conscious consumers partially offset these benefits.