We develop a model of performance evaluation and fund flows for mutual funds in a family. Family performance has two effects on the estimate of a member fund's skill and its inflows: a positive common-skill effect, and a negative correlated-noise effect. The overall spillover is either positive or negative, depending on the weight of common skill and correlation of noise in returns. Its absolute value increases with family size, and declines over time. The sensitivity of flows to a fund's own performance is affected accordingly. Empirical estimates of fund flow sensitivities show patterns consistent with rational cross-fund learning within families.

I investigate mutual fund flows at the individual fund and at the fund family level. At the individual, I use SEC filings to decompose fund flows into inflows and outflows. This decomposition of net flows into its component parts provides a way to examine differences in how search costs and investor learning affect investors who are entering a fund (or adding to their investments) versus those investors who are leaving a fund (or decreasing their investments). I then examine the effect of the existence of an advertisement for the fund on these investors. At the mutual fund family level, I examine how the characteristics and performance of mutual fund families affect the flows to the family as a whole. I then examine the effects of advertising expenditures on flows to the fund family.

How to prevent runs on open-end mutual funds? In recent years, markets have observed an innovation that changed the way open-end funds are priced. Alternative pricing rules (known as swing pricing) adjust funds’ net asset values to pass on funds’ trading costs to transacting shareholders. Using unique data on investor transactions in U.K. corporate bond funds, we show that swing pricing eliminates the first-mover advantage arising from the traditional pricing rule and significantly reduces redemptions during stress periods. The positive impact of alternative pricing rules on fund flows reverses in calm periods when costs associated with higher tracking error dominate the pricing effect.

We investigate whether mutual fund families strategically allocate performance across their member funds favoring those more likely to generate higher fee income or future inflows. We find evidence of strategic cross-fund subsidization of 'high family value' funds (i.e. high fees or high past performers) at the expense of 'low value' funds in the order of 6 to 28 basis points of extra net-of-style performance per month, depending on the criteria. This overperformance is above the one that would exist between similar funds not part of the same fund family. We further document how this family strategy takes place by looking at preferential allocation of IPO deals and at the amount of opposite trades among 'high' and 'low value' funds belonging to the same fund complex (a practice that can encompass 'cross-trading'). Our findings complement the existing literature on distortions in delegated asset management by highlighting the role played by family affiliation. They are also relevant to the regulatory debate concerning 'cross-trading' between funds under common management.

The Oxford Handbook of Banking, Third Edition provides an overview and analysis of developments and research in this rapidly evolving field. Aimed at graduate students of economics, banking, and finance; academics; practitioners; regulators; and policy makers, it strikes a balance between abstract theory, empirical analysis, and practitioner and policy-related material. Split into five distinct parts The Oxford Handbook of Banking is a one-stop source of relevant research in banking. It examines the theory of banking, bank operations and performance, regulatory and policy perspectives, macroeconomic perspectives in banking, and international differences in banking structures and environments. Taking a global perspective it examines banking systems in the United States, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, Africa, the European Union, transition countries of Europe, and Latin America. Thematic issues covered include financial innovation and technological change; consumer and mortgage lending; Islamic banking; and how banks influence real economic activity. Fully revised and now including brand new chapters on a range of geographical regions, bank bailouts and bail-ins, and behavioral economics amongst many other topics, this third edition of The Oxford Handbook of Banking provides readers with insights to seminal and contemporary research in banking and an opportunity to learn about the diversity of financial systems around the world.

This dissertation consists of three essays on the relations among investors, mutual funds, and fund families. Chapter one presents a model of new fund openings as a function of the past performance of a family's existing funds. At the fund level, we model the relations among fund performance, investment flows, and the risk-taking behavior of the fund manager. Our model predicts that families dominated either by outperforming funds or by underperforming funds are more likely to open a new fund than are families composed of average performers. We predict that an asymmetric performance-fund flow relation combined with expected intra-family flows from existing underperformers to a new fund provide an incentive for families with severely under-performing funds to open a new fund in hopes of managing a `star'. Chapter two presents an empirical analysis of new fund openings. We study fund performance, investment flows, and risk level and examine the relation between the distribution of performance across funds within a family and new fund openings. We find that new fund openings are positively correlated with measures of both extreme underperformance and extreme outperformance of existing funds as well as measures of the number of `dog' funds within a family. The evidence supports our predictions in Chapter 1. Chapter three addresses the relation between advisory firm organization and mutual fund performance and expenses. Specifically, we hypothesize three relations. First, the ownership structure of a fund family--mutualized, privately held, or publicly owned--may impact fund manager behavior and be reflected in expenses and/or performance. Second, fund families may experience some net pecuniary benefit or harm as a result of subsidiary affiliation. Finally, we examine expense and performance differences across directly advised versus subadvised funds. We find evidence that publicly owned fund families provide investors with lower style-adjusted returns and alpha at higher cost than do privately owned or mutualized families. Similarly, we find that bank and insurance affiliates underperform their peers in both returns net of expenses and alpha net of expenses, and that diversified financial services affiliates outperform in these measures.