We examine the dynamics of assets under management (AUM) and management fees at the portfolio manager level in the closed-end fund industry. We find that managers capitalize on good past performance and favorable investor perceptions about future performance, as reflected in fund premiums, through AUM expansions and fee increases. However, the penalties for poor performance or unfavorable investor perceptions are either insignificant, or substantially mitigated by manager tenure. Long tenure is generally associated with poor performance and high discounts. Our findings suggest substantial managerial power in capturing CEF rents. We also document significant diseconomies of scale at the manager level.

We study daily money market mutual fund flows at the individual share class level during September 2008. This fine granularity of data allows new insights into investor and portfolio holding characteristics conducive to run risk in cash-like asset pools. We find that cross-sectional flow data observed during the week of the Lehman failure are consistent with key implications of a simple model of coordination with incomplete information and strategic complementarities. Similar conclusions follow from daily models fitted to capture dynamic interactions between investors with differing levels of sophistication within the same money fund, holding constant the underlying portfolio.

We examine the dynamics of assets under management (AUM) and management fees at the portfolio manager level in the closed-end fund industry. We find that managers capitalize on good past performance and favorable investor perceptions about future performance, as reflected in fund premiums, through AUM expansions and fee increases. However, the penalties for poor performance or unfavorable investor perceptions are either insignificant, or substantially mitigated by manager tenure. Long tenure is generally associated with poor performance and high discounts. Our findings suggest substantial managerial power in capturing CEF rents. We also document significant diseconomies of scale at the manager level.