Massimo Massa

Idiosyncratic Volatility and Product Market Competition

This Paper investigates the link between a firm’s competitive environment and the idiosyncratic volatility of its stock returns. We find that firms enjoying high market power, or established in concentrated industries, have lower idiosyncratic volatility. We posit that competition affects volatility in two distinct and inter-related ways. Market power works as a hedging instrument that smoothes out idiosyncratic fluctuations. At the same time, a high degree of market power implies lower information uncertainty for investors and therefore lower return volatility. We find strong support for both effects. Our results contribute to the understanding of recent trends of idiosyncratic volatility, and confirm the important link between stock market performance and the competitive environment of firms.

How do family strategies affect fund performance? When performance-maximization is not the only game in town

Abstract This is a first attempt to study how the structure of the industry affects mutual fund behavior. I show that industry structure matters; the mutual fund families employ strategies that rely on the heterogeneity of the investors in terms of investment horizon by offering the possibility to switch across different funds belonging to the same family at no cost. I argue that this option acts as an externality for all the funds belonging to the same family, affecting the target level of performance the family wants to reach and the number of funds it wants to set up. By using the universe of the U.S. mutual fund industry, I empirically confirm this intuition. I find evidence of family driven heterogeneity among funds and show that families actively exploit it. I argue that the more families are able to differentiate themselves in terms of non-performance-related characteristics, the less they need to compete in terms of performance. Product differentiation—i.e., the dispersion in the “services” (fees, performance) that the competing funds offer—affects performance and fund proliferation. In particular, I show that the degree of product differentiation negatively affects performance and positively affects fund proliferation.

Shareholders at the Gate? Institutional Investors and Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions

We study the role of institutional investors in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As). We find that foreign institutional ownership is positively associated with the intensity of cross-border M&A activity worldwide. Foreign institutional ownership increases the probability that a merger deal is cross-border, successful, and the bidder takes full control of the target firm. This relation is stronger in countries with weaker legal institutions and in less developed markets, suggesting some substitutability between local governance and foreign institutional investors. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that foreign institutional investors act as facilitators in the international market for corporate control; they build bridges between firms and reduce transaction costs and information asymmetry between bidder and target. We conclude that cross-border portfolio investments of institutional money managers and cross-border M&As are complements in promoting financial integration worldwide.

Index Funds and Stock Market Growth

We use 2 years of daily flows for three major Standard and Poors index funds to analyze the relationship among index funds, asset prices, and volatility. We find strong contemporaneous correlation between inflows and returns, no evidence for positive feedback trading, and evidence that negative market returns may induce subsequent sales. Market volatility affects investors as dynamic risk sharing, but higher volatility does not drive investors from the market. Bullish newsletter sentiment is associated with greater inflows. We report high correlation among investor disagreement and market uncertainty and flows. Dispersion in advice and open interest correlate with lower inflows.

When Should Firms Share Credit with Employees? Evidence from Anonymously Managed Mutual Funds

We study the choice between named and anonymous mutual fund managers. We argue that fund families weigh the benefits of naming managers against the cost associated with their increased future bargaining power. Named managers receive more media mentions, have greater inflows, and suffer less return diversion due to within family cross-subsidization, but departures of named managers reduce net flows. Naming managers became less common between 1993 and 2004. This was especially true in the asset classes and cities most affected by the hedge fund boom, which increased outside opportunities for, and the cost of retaining, successful named managers.

Do Demand Curves for Currencies Slope Down? Evidence from the MSCI Global Index Change

Do exchange rates react to exogenous capital movements? We explore this issue based on the redefinition of the MSCI international equity indices announced on 10 December 2000 and implemented in two steps on 30 November 2001 and 31 May 2002. The index changes implied major changes in the representation of different countries in the MSCI world index. Our event study shows a strong announcement effect in which countries with a decreasing equity representation vis-a-vis the US depreciated against the dollar. Around the two implementation dates, we find further systematic, but opposite, exchange rate effects, which can be interpreted as a result of excessive speculation on the first implementation date and insufficient speculation on the second date.

The Invisible Hand of Short Selling: Does Short Selling Discipline Earnings Management?

We hypothesize that short selling has a disciplining role vis-a-vis firm managers that forces them to reduce earnings management. Using firm-level short-selling data for thirty-three countries collected over a sample period from 2002 to 2009, we document a significantly negative relationship between the threat of short selling and earnings management. Tests based on instrumental variable and exogenous regulatory experiments offer evidence of a causal link between short selling and earnings management. Our findings suggest that short selling functions as an external governance mechanism to discipline managers.

Disposition Matters: Volume, Volatility, and Price Impact of a Behavioral Bias

The disposition effect is the well-known tendency to ride losers and sell winners. A panel of individual investor trading records allows examination of the differences in price, volume, and volatility attributable to the disposition effect. When disposition-prone investors increase their holdings in a stock, the volatility, volume, and the return of the stock all drop, as theory would predict. Exposure to a portfolio of stocks held by disposition-prone investors explains cross-sectional differences in daily returns, controlling for other factors and characteristics. In other words, disposition matters to individual and aggregate stock price dynamics.

Dividend Clienteles Around the World: Evidence from Institutional Holdings

We examine the relation between international institutional ownership and payout policy using a comprehensive data set of equity holdings from 37 countries over the years 2000-2007. We find that foreign institutional ownership is negatively associated with the likelihood that a firm pays dividends and the size of dividend payments. The greater the tax disadvantage of dividends to international investors, and the higher are transaction costs related to repatriating and reinvesting dividends, the more international investors push for fewer dividends. The results support the existence of dividend clienteles around the world. Finally, we find that firms that comply with foreign institutional shareholders preference for lower payouts are able to retain and invest more of their earnings.

The Role of Commonality between CEO and Divisional Managers in Internal Capital Markets

We study the role played by the informal links, or “connections,” between the chief executive officer (CEO) and the divisional managers of conglomerate organizations. Using data on a large sample of multisegment U.S. corporations from 1996 to 2004, we show that segments run by connected managers receive more investment and exhibit lower sensitivity to cash flow shortfalls (and exhibit higher sensitivity to other segments’ cash flow). At the firm level, having more connected managers presiding over segments with high Tobin’s Q improves resource allocation and increases firm value. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the mutual trust associated with connections reduces the need for wasteful reallocation of resources across divisions of conglomerate firms.