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March 2020

[Finance] Chengwei Wang - Investing in Low-Trust Countries: On the Role of Social Trust in the Global Mutual Fund Industry

by Wang Chengwei

Professor Chengwei Wang' paper has just been accepted for publication in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis.



Abstract 

We hypothesize that social trust, in mitigating contracting incompleteness, may have an important effect on the activeness and effectiveness of delegated portfolio management. Using a complete sample of worldwide open-end mutual funds, we find that trust is positively associated with the activeness of funds and that trust-related active share delivers superior performance (e.g., approximately 2% per year for cross-border investments). Moreover, “trust in the market” and “trust in managers” play important yet different roles for different types of cross-border delegated portfolio management. Our results suggest that trust acts as a fundamental building block for delegated portfolio management.
Keywords

trust, international investments, mutual funds, performance

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wang Chengwei

Associate Professor / Economics / Finance

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