The Journal of Finance

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.

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Institutional Investors and Corporate Governance: The Incentive to Be Engaged

Published: 10/06/2021   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13085

JONATHAN LEWELLEN, KATHARINA LEWELLEN

This paper studies institutional investors’ incentives to be engaged shareholders. In 2017, the average institution gains an extra $129,000 in annual management fees if a stockholding increases 1% in value, considering both the direct effect on assets under management and the indirect effect on subsequent fund flows. The estimates range from $19,600 for investments in small firms to $307,600 for investments in large firms. Institutional shareholders in one firm often gain when the firm's competitors do well, by virtue of institutions’ holdings in those firms, but the impact of common ownership is modest in the most concentrated industries.


Learning, Asset‐Pricing Tests, and Market Efficiency

Published: 12/17/2002   |   DOI: 10.1111/1540-6261.00456

Jonathan Lewellen, Jay Shanken

This paper studies the asset‐pricing implications of parameter uncertainty. We show that, when investors must learn about expected cash flows, empirical tests can find patterns in the data that differ from those perceived by rational investors. Returns might appear predictable to an econometrician, or appear to deviate from the Capital Asset Pricing Model, but investors can neither perceive nor exploit this predictability. Returns may also appear excessively volatile even though prices react efficiently to cash‐flow news. We conclude that parameter uncertainty can be important for characterizing and testing market efficiency.