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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Search results: 6.

Fund Manager Use of Public Information: New Evidence on Managerial Skills

Published: 03/20/2007   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2007.01215.x

MARCIN KACPERCZYK, AMIT SERU

We show theoretically that the responsiveness of a fund manager's portfolio allocations to changes in public information decreases in the manager's skill. We go on to estimate this sensitivity (RPI) as the R2 of the regression of changes in a manager's portfolio holdings on changes in public information using a panel of U.S. equity funds. Consistent with RPI containing information related to managerial skills, we find a strong inverse relationship between RPI and various existing measures of performance, and between RPI and fund flows. We also document that both fund‐ and manager‐specific attributes affect RPI.


Fund Manager Use of Public Information: New Evidence on Managerial Skills

Published: 03/20/2007   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2007.01215.x

MARCIN KACPERCZYK, AMIT SERU

We show theoretically that the responsiveness of a fund manager's portfolio allocations to changes in public information decreases in the manager's skill. We go on to estimate this sensitivity (RPI) as the R2 of the regression of changes in a manager's portfolio holdings on changes in public information using a panel of U.S. equity funds. Consistent with RPI containing information related to managerial skills, we find a strong inverse relationship between RPI and various existing measures of performance, and between RPI and fund flows. We also document that both fund‐ and manager‐specific attributes affect RPI.


Legal Risk and Insider Trading

Published: 12/11/2023   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13299

MARCIN KACPERCZYK, EMILIANO S. PAGNOTTA

Do illegal insiders internalize legal risk? We address this question with hand‐collected data from 530 SEC (the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) investigations. Using two plausibly exogenous shocks to expected penalties, we show that insiders trade less aggressively and earlier and concentrate on tips of greater value when facing a higher risk. The results match the predictions of a model where an insider internalizes the impact of trades on prices and the likelihood of prosecution and anticipates penalties in proportion to trade profits. Our findings lend support to the effectiveness of U.S. regulations' deterrence and the long‐standing hypothesis that insider trading enforcement can hamper price informativeness.


On the Industry Concentration of Actively Managed Equity Mutual Funds

Published: 08/12/2005   |   DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2005.00785.x

MARCIN KACPERCZYK, CLEMENS SIALM, LU ZHENG

Mutual fund managers may decide to deviate from a well‐diversified portfolio and concentrate their holdings in industries where they have informational advantages. In this paper, we study the relation between the industry concentration and the performance of actively managed U.S. mutual funds from 1984 to 1999. Our results indicate that, on average, more concentrated funds perform better after controlling for risk and style differences using various performance measures. This finding suggests that investment ability is more evident among managers who hold portfolios concentrated in a few industries.


The Private Production of Safe Assets

Published: 12/07/2020   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12997

MARCIN KACPERCZYK, CHRISTOPHE PÉRIGNON, GUILLAUME VUILLEMEY

Using high‐frequency, granular panel data on short‐term debt securities issued in Europe, we study the existence, empirical boundaries, and fragility of private assets' safety. We show that only securities with the shortest maturities, issued by banks (certificates of deposit, or CDs), benefit from a safety premium. The supply of such CDs responds positively to excess safety demand. During periods of stress, this relation vanishes for all issuers of private securities, even though their aggregate volumes do not collapse. Other dimensions of heterogeneity, including issuers' balance sheets or their domicile countries' fiscal capacity, are less relevant for private safety.


Time‐Varying Fund Manager Skill

Published: 07/26/2013   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12084

MARCIN KACPERCZYK, STIJN VAN NIEUWERBURGH, LAURA VELDKAMP

We propose a new definition of skill as general cognitive ability to pick stocks or time the market. We find evidence for stock picking in booms and market timing in recessions. Moreover, the same fund managers that pick stocks well in expansions also time the market well in recessions. These fund managers significantly outperform other funds and passive benchmarks. Our results suggest a new measure of managerial ability that weighs a fund's market timing more in recessions and stock picking more in booms. The measure displays more persistence than either market timing or stock picking alone and predicts fund performance.