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Review of Financial Studies Vol. 27 No. 11 2014

Mutual Funds and Information Diffusion: The Role of Country-Level Governance

Chunmei Lin1; Massimo Massa2; Hong Zhang3

1 Erasmus University Rotterdam · 2 INSEAD · 3 Tsinghua University

open access

Abstract

We hypothesize that poor country-level governance, which makes public information less reliable, induces fund managers to increase their use of semipublic information. Utilizing data from international mutual funds and stocks over the 2000–2009 period, we find that semipublic information-related stock rebalancing can be five times higher in countries with the worst quality of governance than in countries with the best. The use of semipublic information increases price informativeness but also increases information asymmetry and reduces stock liquidity. It also intensified the price impact and liquidity crunch during the recent global financial crisis.

DOI
10.1093/rfs/hhu046
Volume
27
Issue
11
Pages
3343-3387
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex openalex crossref

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