The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.
AFA members can log in to view full-text articles below.
View past issues
Search the Journal of Finance:
Search results: 1.
Does Herding Behavior Reveal Skill? An Analysis of Mutual Fund Performance
Published: 06/19/2018 | DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12699
HAO JIANG, MICHELA VERARDO
We uncover a negative relation between herding behavior and skill in the mutual fund industry. Our new, dynamic measure of fund‐level herding captures the tendency of fund managers to follow the trades of the institutional crowd. We find that herding funds underperform their antiherding peers by over 2% per year. Differences in skill drive this performance gap: Antiherding funds make superior investment decisions even on stocks not heavily traded by institutions, and can anticipate the trades of the crowd; furthermore, the herding‐antiherding performance gap is persistent, wider when skill is more valuable, and larger among managers with stronger career concerns.