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Mutual Fund Transparency and Corporate Myopia

Vikas Agarwal1; Rahul Vashishtha2; Mohan Venkatachalam2

1 J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University · 2 Fuqua School of Business, Duke University ,

Review of Financial Studies 2018 open access

Pressure from institutional money managers to generate profits in the short run is often blamed for corporate myopia. Theoretical research suggests that money managers' short term focus stems from their career concerns and greater fund transparency can amplify these concerns. Using a difference-in-differences design around a regulatory shock that increased transparency about fund managers' portfolio choices, we examine whether increased transparency encourages myopic corporate investment behavior. We find that corporate innovation declines following the regulatory shock. Moreover, evidence from mutual fund trading behavior corroborates that these results are driven by increased short-term focus of money managers.

DOI
10.1093/rfs/hhx125
Volume
31 (5)
Pages
1966-2003
Language
en
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