This article tests for differences in execution costs among specialist firms for New York Stock Exchange listed securities. Execution cost differences provide a measure of the relative performance of specialist firms. The authors find a substantial difference in effective spreads and order processing costs across specialist firms, controlling for stock characteristics. While economically significant, the differences in execution costs between specialist firms are much smaller than the cross-market differences reported by Roger Huang and Hans Stoll (1996). Within a specialist firm, there is a positive relation between order processing costs and trading activity that is consistent with the hypothesis that active stocks subsidize inactive stocks.

We examine in an event-study context what factors affect the relative performance of stocks during liquidity crises. We find that market risk, measured by the market beta, is not a good measure of expected abnormal stock returns on days with liquidity crises. Instead, abnormal stock returns during liquidity crises are strongly negatively related to liquidity risk, measured by the co-movement of stock returns with market liquidity. The degree of informational asymmetry and the ownership structure of the firm also help to explain abnormal stock returns on crisis days. Our findings have important implications for managing the liquidity risk of equity portfolios.

We study the relation between hedge fund equity holdings and measures of informational efficiency of stock prices derived from intraday transactions as well as daily data. Our findings support the role of hedge funds as arbitrageurs who reduce mispricing in the market. Hedge funds invest in stocks that are relatively inefficiently priced, and the price efficiency of these stocks improves after hedge funds increase their holdings. Hedge fund ownership contributes more to efficient pricing than ownership by other types of institutional investors. However, stocks held by hedge funds experienced large declines in price efficiency during several liquidity crises.Received July 27, 2016; editorial decision January 07, 2017 by Editor Wayne Ferson.

We study the dynamic relation between aggregate mutual fund flow and market-wide volatility. Using daily flow data and a VAR approach, we find that market volatility is negatively related to concurrent and lagged flow. A structural VAR impulse response analysis suggests that shock in flow has a negative impact on market volatility: An inflow (outflow) shock predicts a decline (an increase) in volatility. From the perspective of volatility–flow relation, we find evidence of volatility timing for recent period of 1998–2003. Finally, we document a differential impact of daily inflow versus outflow on intraday volatility. The relation between intraday volatility and inflow (outflow) becomes weaker (stronger) from morning to afternoon.

This paper examines how market frictions influence the managerial incentives and organizational structure of new hedge funds. We develop a stylized model in which new managers search for accredited investors and have stronger incentives to acquire managerial skill when encountering low investor demand. Fund families endogenously arise to mitigate frictions and weaken the performance incentives of affiliated new funds. Empirically, based on a TASS‐HFR‐BarclayHedge merged database, we find that ex ante identified cold inceptions facing low investor demand outperform existing hedge funds and hot inceptions facing high demand and that cold stand‐alone inceptions outperform all types of family‐affiliated inceptions.