We investigate the performance of mutual funds that trade using private information. These funds are uniquely identified from a set of 2730 funds with 44,315 fund-periods between 1994 and 2005. We compare the alignment of fund trades with brokers’ recommendations, which we regard as “public information” in the universe of informed and uninformed mutual funds. Funds that systematically trade counter to the public information form a homogenous subset of the privately informed funds. By using private information that contradicts the public information, these funds exhibit a superior average performance. After we control for serial correlation in fund returns, we assess this advantage as being an economically significant 1.7% per annum. We also show empirically that smaller funds are better able to capture the benefit of private information.

An empirical issue is whether a mutual fund’s change in intertemporal risk is intentional or arises from risk mean reversion. Our methodology uses actual fund trades to identify funds that actively change risk. Funds that are statistically identified as trading to change return variance or tracking error variance do not exhibit risk mean reversion. Mostly, funds trade to reduce risk and, in particular, tracking error variance. This is most evident for funds that previously attained a low tracking error variance. We find no evidence of a relation between past performance and intended changes to return variance or tracking error variance.

This study examines the relation between accounting and capital market risk measures for a sample of 46 listed Asian banks during the period 1998–2003. By applying a panel data analysis that includes a control for country-specific factors, the results show that the standard deviation of the return-on-assets and loan-loss-reserves-to-gross-loans are significantly related to total risk. Also gross-loans-to-total-assets and loan-loss-reserves-to-gross-loans are significantly related to non-systematic risk. These results indicate that in these Asian countries, firm-specific risk is more important than systematic risk and the results are robust even though significant differences exist across Asian countries in banking activities, capital adequacy requirements, and deposit insurance protection.

Following the 1997/1998 financial crisis, Indonesian banks experienced major regulatory changes, including the adoption of the blanket guarantee scheme (BGS) in 1998, a limited guarantee (LG) in 2005, and changes in capital regulation in 1998 and 2001. We examine the impact of these regulatory changes on market discipline during the period 1995–2009. The price of deposits is used to measure market discipline in a dynamic panel data methodology on a sample of 104 commercial banks. We find a weakening of market discipline following the introduction of the BGS. The result is consistent with the deposit insurance scheme being credible in the lower capital requirement environment. The adoption of LG in a recovering economy also mitigates the role of market discipline. However, market discipline is more pronounced in listed banks than unlisted banks and in foreign banks than domestic banks. These results have important implications for banking regulation and supervision, particularly during a crisis period.