Essays on Institutional Investors

This dissertation analyzes the role of institutional investors in capital markets. The first essay studies what affect mutual fund decisions on hiring and firing sub-advisors and the ex-post effects. We show that deterioration in mutual fund performance or increase in outflows predicts a higher propensity of a fund to change its sub-advisors. However, mutual funds continue to underperform by about 1% in the 18-months after a change in sub-advisor, even after controlling for fund category, past returns and past flows. The continuing underperformance of mutual funds can be attributed to decreasing returns for sub-advisors in deploying their ability as suggested in Berk and Green (2004). The second essay provides empirical analysis on hedge fund exposures to overpriced real estate assets. Consistent with models in which delegated portfolio managers may want to invest in overpriced assets, I find that hedge funds were holding real estate stocks instead of selling short during the period of overpricing (2003Q1-2007Q2). The third essay finds that investor composition affect fund managers' portfolio choices. Specifically, I show that retail-oriented hedge funds invested more in overpriced real estate assets than institution-oriented hedge funds.