We study the influence of perceived auditor quality on investment decisions by bond mutual fund investors. Audits of bond mutual funds require significant auditor expertise. Fund managers estimate daily the fair market values of holdings that are often opaque and illiquid. Managers can use their discretion to manipulate their fund's performance results. While it is known that investment flows into funds that report good past performance, little evidence exists about whether investors' confidence in the reliability of fund financial reports is influenced by auditor quality. Using hand‐collected data from SEC filings, we find that the positive association between reported performance and investment flows is stronger for funds with auditors who are industry specialists and are longer‐tenured, as well as for funds that pay higher audit fees. We do not find that auditor office size strengthens the association. We also find that the presence of industry‐specialist auditors, long‐tenured auditors, and higher audit fees lead to additional disclosure in the form of emphasis‐of‐matter. This study contributes to the streams of research investigating perceived audit quality, fund investment decisions, and auditing for financial services.

Rising intangible assets on corporate balance sheets around the world could limit borrowing capacity and consequently hinder growth if firms must preserve cash and forgo investment opportunities. We show that financial development lowers the sensitivity of cash holdings to tangible assets and promotes firm growth. We also find that sectors with a smaller proportion of tangible assets grow faster in countries with more developed financial markets. Our analysis reveals an important asset tangibility channel through which financial development facilitates firm growth.

We provide an entropy approach for measuring the asymmetric comovement between the return on a single asset and the market return. This approach yields a model-free test for stock return asymmetry, generalizing the correlation-based test proposed by Hong, Tu, and Zhou (2007). Based on this test, we find that asymmetry is much more pervasive than previously thought. Moreover, our approach also provides an entropy-based measure of downside asymmetric comovement. In the cross section of stock returns, we find an asymmetry premium: Higher downside asymmetric comovement with the market indicates higher expected returns.

Based on high frequency S & P 500 exchange-traded fund (ETF) data from 1993–2013, we show an intraday momentum pattern: the first half-hour return on the market as measured from the previous day’s market close predicts the last half-hour return. This predictability, which is both statistically and economically significant, is stronger on more volatile days, on higher volume days, on recession days, and on major macroeconomic news release days. Intraday momentum also exists for ten other most actively traded domestic and international ETFs. Theoretically, the intraday momentum is consistent not only with Bogousslavsky’s (2016) model of infrequent portfolio rebalancing but also with a model of late-informed trading near the market close.