For sophisticated institutional investors, active management outperforms passive management by more than 180 bps per year in emerging markets and by about 50 bps in EAFE markets over the 1993 to 2008 period. In U.S. markets, active management underperforms. Consistent with these patterns in returns, institutions use active management more frequently in non-U.S. markets, particularly emerging markets. Finally, we provide some evidence that one contributor to the active outperformance is institutional constraints on flows to non-U.S. markets. Overall, our results suggest that the value of active management depends on the efficiency of the underlying market and the sophistication of the investor.

We present a model of equilibrium allocation of capital for arbitrage. If asset prices may fall low enough, it is profitable to carry liquid capital to acquire assets in such states. Set against this, keeping capital in liquid form entails costs in terms of foregone profitable investments. This trade-off generates occasional fire sales and limited arbitrage capital as robust phenomena. With learning-by-doing effects, arbitrage capital moves in to acquire assets only if fire sales are steep. However, once arbitrage capital finds it profitable to acquire assets, it requires similar returns elsewhere, inducing contagious fire-sale prices even for unrelated assets.

This paper analyzes how risk premiums altered the use of commercial paper relative to bank loans during the recent financial crisis. Consistent with the theoretical and empirical literature on how surges in risk premiums can induce plunges in under-collateralized credit or credit funded with noninsured sources, results indicate that a spike in risk premiums induced a plunge in commercial paper use during the recent crisis. This paper also finds that Federal Reserve interventions in the money market helped prevent the commercial paper market from melting down to the extent seen during the early 1930s.

We study the liquidity demand of large settlement banks in the UK and its effect on the money markets before and during the subprime crisis of 2007–08. We find that the liquidity demand of large settlement banks experienced a 30% increase in the period immediately following August 9 2007, the day when money markets froze, igniting the crisis. Following this shift, liquidity demand had a precautionary nature in that it rose on days of high payment activity and for banks with greater credit risk. This caused overnight interbank rates to rise, an effect virtually absent in the precrisis period.

Households “sort” across neighborhoods according to their wealth and their preferences for public goods, social characteristics, and commuting opportunities. The aggregation of these individual choices in markets and in other institutions influences the supply of amenities and local public goods. Pollution, congestion, and the quality of public education are examples. Over the past decade, advances in economic models of this sorting process have led to a new framework that promises to alter the ways we conceptualize the policy evaluation process in the future. These “equilibrium sorting” models use the properties of market equilibria, together with information on household behavior, to infer structural parameters that characterize preference heterogeneity. The results can be used to develop theoretically consistent predictions for the welfare implications of future policy changes. Analysis is not confined to marginal effects or a partial equilibrium setting. Nor is it limited to prices and quantities. Sorting models can integrate descriptions of how nonmarket goods are generated, estimate how they affect decision making, and, in turn, predict how they will be affected by future policies targeting prices or quantities. Conversely, sorting models can predict how equilibrium prices and quantities will be affected by policies that target product quality, information, or amenities generated by the sorting process. These capabilities are just beginning to be understood and used in applied research. This survey article aims to synthesize the state of knowledge on equilibrium sorting, the new possibilities for policy analysis, and the conceptual and empirical challenges that define the frontiers of the literature.

Rakesh V. Vohra of University of Pennsylvania reviews, “Jane Austen, Game Theorist” by Michael Suk-Young Chwe. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores the ways in which the core ideas of game theory appear in Jane Austen's novels. Discusses the argument; game theory in context; folk tales and human rights; game theory in Flossie and the Fox; Austen's six novels; Austen's foundations of game theory; Austen's competing models; Austen on what strategic thinking is not; Austen's innovations; Austen on strategic thinking's disadvantages; Austen's intentions; Austen on cluelessness; and real-world cluelessness. Chwe is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles.”

Deregulation is endogenous. It is preceded by poor industry performance and is predictable with performance variables. These results imply that merger activity following deregulation should be systematically related to poor pre-deregulation industry performance. Consistent with this hypothesis, I find that post-deregulation mergers serve a contractionary role. Bidders and targets in post-deregulation mergers are poor performers prior to the merger and operate with significant excess capacity. Consistent with the hypothesis that post-deregulation mergers represent a form of exit, the frequency of cash and bankruptcy mergers is significantly higher following deregulation and the offer premium is significantly lower.

Institutional investors exhibit substantial home-state bias in private equity. This effect is particularly pronounced for public pension funds, where overweighting amounts to 9.8% of aggregate private-equity investments and 16.5% for the average limited partner. Public pension funds' in-state investments achieve performance that is lower by two to four percentage points than both their own similar out-of-state investments and similar investments in their state by out-of-state investors. Overweighting in home-state investments by public pension funds is greater in venture capital and real estate than in buyout funds. States with political climates characterized by more self-dealing invest a larger share of their portfolio in local investments, although a given local investment performs only as poorly in these states as in other states. Relative to the performance of the rest of the private equity universe, overweighting and underperformance in local investments reduce public pension fund resources by $1.2 billion per year.

[What determines the sustainability of sovereign debt? We develop a model where myopic governments seek popularity but can nevertheless commit credibly to service external debt. They do not default when debt is low because they would lose access to debt markets and be forced to reduce spending; they do not default as debt builds up and net new borrowing becomes difficult, because of the adverse consequences from default to the domestic financial sector. More myopic governments default less often, but tax in a more distortionary way and increase the vulnerability of the domestic financial sector to future government debt default.]