Complete financial markets transform the political choice between candidates with different redistribution policies. If redistribution policies do not affect aggregate wealth, then financial trade implies that wealth considerations have no effect on voting and so do not affect who wins. However, an election in which one candidate would redistribute results in redistribution, and redistribution is the same whether or not he wins. Furthermore, he proposes, and if elected carries out, more redistribution than he prefers. If redistribution policies do affect aggregate wealth, then everybody expects more wealth if the candidate with the higher aggregate‐wealth policy wins.

The literature documents a convex relation between past returns and fund flows of mutual funds. We show this to be consistent with fund incentives, because funds discard exactly those strategies which underperform. Past returns tell less about the future performance of funds which discard, so flows are less sensitive to them when they are poor. Our model predicts that strategy changes only occur after bad performance, and that bad performers who change strategy have dollar flow and future performance that are less sensitive to current performance than those that do not. Empirical tests support both predictions.