This study provides a comprehensive overview of the use of credit default swaps by U.S. corporate bond funds and analyzes in detail whether certain characteristics of managers, in addition to the fundamentals of a fund, determine how their use these credit derivatives. Results suggest that a...

The background to this study is the failure of mutual fund independent directors to fulfill their obligations as “shareholder watchdogs,” as defined in the 40Act. What is needed is for fund independent directors to “request” fund advisers to provide “normative transparency of...

We study the effect of the educational diversity of managers on the performance of team-managed mutual funds using a large sample of U.S. equity funds from 1994 to 2013. We consider diversity in terms of both final educational degree and field of educational specialization. We find that, in...

The investment fund sector has expanded dramatically since the crisis of 2008-2009. As the sector grows, so do the implications of its risk-taking for the wider financial system and real economy. This paper provides empirical evidence for the existence of widespread risk-taking incentives in the...