A previous study finds evidence to support selection ability among active fund investors for equity funds listed in 1982. Using a large sample of equity funds, I find evidence that funds that receive more money subsequently perform significantly better than those that lose money. This effect is short‐lived and is largely but not completely explained by a strategy of betting on winners. In the aggregate, there is no significant evidence that funds that receive more money subsequently beat the market. However, it is possible to earn positive abnormal returns by using the cash flow information for small funds.

We investigate whether skilled hedge fund managers are more likely to pursue unique investment strategies that result in superior performance. We propose a measure of the distinctiveness of a fund's investment strategy based on historical fund return data. We call the measure the “Strategy Distinctiveness Index” (SDI). We document substantial cross-sectional variations as well as strong persistence in SDI. Our main result indicates that, on average, a higher SDI is associated with better subsequent performance. After adjusting for risk, funds in the highest SDI quintile outperform funds in the lowest quintile by 3.5% in the subsequent year.

We examine situations where the same fund manager simultaneously manages mutual funds and hedge funds. We refer to this as side-by-side management. We document 344 such cases involving 693 mutual funds and 538 hedge funds. Proponents of this practice argue that it is essential to hire and retain star performers. Detractors argue that the temptation for abuse is high, and the practice should be banned. Our analysis based on various performance metrics shows that side-by-side mutual fund managers significantly outperform peer funds, consistent with this privilege being granted primarily to star performers. Interestingly, side-by-side hedge fund managers are at best on par with their style category peers, casting further doubt on the idea that conflicts of interest undermine mutual fund investors. Thus, we find no evidence of welfare loss for mutual fund investors due to exploitation of conflicts of interest.

We study a significant innovation with widespread consequences for the mutual fund industry: the introduction of multiple-class funds that give investors a choice among alternative load and fee structures. The transition to a multiple-class structure represents an important step in the evolution of the mutual fund industry. It also provides a well-controlled setting for research on the structure of funds, on investor clienteles and their impact on fund performance and, more generally, about the manner in which financial innovations tend to be adopted. We develop a simple model of a fund's decision on whether and when to introduce new classes and empirically investigate the model's predictions that: (a) Funds with more skilled management, less sensitivity of flows to performance, smaller size, higher existing loads and membership in larger families are better positioned to benefit and, therefore, more likely to switch to a multiple-class structure earlier; (b) The new classes increase the level and volatility of fund inflow by attracting investors with short and uncertain investment horizons – which, in turn, can negatively impact fund performance. Our empirical results are generally supportive of the model's predictions.

We propose a new measure, active fundamental performance (AFP), to identify skilled mutual fund managers. AFP evaluates fund investment skills conditioned on the release of firms’ fundamental information. For each fund, we examine the covariance between deviations of its portfolio weights from a benchmark portfolio and the underlying stock performance on days when firms publicize fundamental information. Because asset prices on these information days better reflect firm fundamentals, AFP can more effectively identify investment skills. From 1984 to 2014, funds in the top decile of high AFP subsequently outperformed those in the bottom decile by 2% to 3% per year. Received August 25, 2016; editorial decision December 17, 2017 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.

We examine the informativeness of fund risk disclosure by combining fund returns and textual data. We develop a novel measure, INF, to capture the explanatory power of disclosed risks for fund returns. Average INF is 55% after controlling for market risk and remains 26–29% after excluding risks related to fund name or strategy. We explain variations in INF through disclosure costs and benefits: (1) Funds with less informative disclosures face SEC comment letters and reduced flow, (2) informative disclosures attract institutional flows, and (3) performance concerns may disincentivize disclosure. Overall, funds face trade-offs between transparency and maintaining their competitive advantage.

Our paper analyzes the geographical preferences of hedge fund investors and the implication of these preferences for hedge fund performance. We find that funds of hedge funds overweigh their investments in hedge funds located in the same geographical areas and that funds with a stronger local bias exhibit superior performance. Local bias also gives rise to excess flow comovement and extreme return clustering within geographic areas. Overall, our results suggest that while funds of funds benefit from local advantages, their local bias also creates market segmentation that can destabilize the underlying hedge funds.

We examine the extent to which a fund's cash flows are affected by the stellar performance of other funds in its family — and consequences of such spillovers. We show that star performance results in greater cash inflow to the fund and to other funds in its family. Moreover, families with higher variation in investment strategies across funds are shown to be more likely to generate star performance. We argue that spillovers may induce lower ability families to pursue star-creating strategies. Consistent with our conjecture, families with high variation in investment strategies across funds significantly underperform low-variation families.

Despite extensive disclosure requirements, mutual fund investors do not observe all actions of fund managers. We estimate the impact of unobserved actions on fund returns using the return gap—the difference between the reported fund return and the return on a portfolio that invests in the previously disclosed fund holdings. We document that unobserved actions of some funds persistently create value, while such actions of other funds destroy value. Our main result shows that the return gap predicts fund performance. (JEL G11, G23) Despite extensive disclosure requirements, mutual fund investors do not observe all actions of fund managers. For example, fund investors do not observe the exact timing of trades and the corresponding transaction costs. On the one hand, fund investors may benefit from unobserved interim trades by skilled fund managers who use their informational advantage to time the purchases and the sales of individual stocks optimally. On the other hand, they may bear hidden costs, such as trading costs, agency costs, and negative investor externalities. In this paper, we analyze the