Research

Education and Investment Skill: Evidence from Mutual Fund Managers

Does the quality of a fund manager’s education predict investment skill? Using syllabi from 669 managers’ colleges, I measure Relevance, fit with investment-management work, and Timeliness, how current coursework is. A one-standard-deviation increase in either predicts 0.5 percentage points higher annual net returns. Prestige controls and wrong-field placebos leave the relation unchanged. Because students tend to attend nearby colleges, I use education quality at the university nearest each manager’s high school as an instrument. Both estimates are significant. The two measures capture distinct skills: Relevance predicts returns with high analyst coverage, and Timeliness when managers must develop their own analysis.

Presented at the FMA Doctoral Student Consortium and its Job Market Paper Presentation Session (October 2026). Scheduled: AFA Annual Meeting Poster Session (January 2027)

Determinants and Consequences of Return to Office Policies

with Sean Flynn and Andra Ghent

We study firms’ return-to-office (RTO) policies by hand-collecting and classifying announcements for the Russell 3000. Among announcing firms, most allow some remote work, but few allow fully remote work. We develop a simple model of a firm’s RTO policy in which a firm trades off productivity loss from work-from-home (WFH) against savings on employee wages and office rent. Relatively lower office rents in a city are associated with more in-person work. Further, firms with female CEOs allow more WFH and firms with older CEOs allow less WFH. Finally, we find no consistently significant stock market reaction to policy announcements; this is consistent with firms correctly balancing the tradeoffs related to WFH, the market having no better information than managers about the optimal policy, or uncertainty on the part of both managers and investors about the optimal policy.

Presented at the AFA Annual Meeting (2026), Rocky Mountain Urban & Real Estate Conference (2026), Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University (2025), AREUEA (2025, 2024), Eastern Finance Association (2025), Treasury Office of Financial Research (2024), UNC CREDA Symposium (2024), Stanford Implications of Remote Work Conference (2024), FMA Annual Meeting (2024), Federal Reserve Board (2023), North American Urban Economics Association (2023), and seminars at Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, and Utah

Active ETFs as Attention Assets: Retail Trading Meets Managed Funds

with Da Huang and Christopher Schwarz

In contrast to active mutual funds (AMFs), active exchange-traded funds (AETFs) are growing rapidly. Their popularity is due to their structure, not performance, as AETFs underperform AMFs. Specifically, attention-driven retail investors trade AETFs as they trade equities: by chasing extreme short-term returns, both positive and negative, which creates a U-shaped flow-performance relation. However, long-term underperformance triggers little outflow, incentivizing AETF managers to raise volatility. Indeed, these managers, who have little overlap with AMF managers, take significantly more risk. Overall, our results show how active management’s migration from mutual funds to ETFs reshapes investor behavior and manager incentives.

Presented at the Conference on Financial Market Regulation (2026), FMA Annual Meeting (2025), ICI Summer Research Workshop (2025), and Northeastern University (2025)

Tax Revenue Risk, Municipal Bond Yield, and Public Investments

with Da Huang and Nathan Seegert

Tax revenue fluctuations can threaten municipalities’ fiscal stability, especially when shortfalls coincide with economic downturns. We study how exposure to tax revenue risk, the covariance between tax revenues and macroeconomic conditions, affects municipal borrowing costs and public investment. Municipalities with higher tax risk pay more to borrow: a one-standard-deviation increase in tax risk raises offering yields by 3 basis points and secondary-market yields by 7 basis points. These effects are robust to a border-discontinuity design and are strongest where alternative repayment capacity is limited. Greater tax risk, in turn, leads to sustained reductions in public investment.

Presented at the National Tax Association Annual Conference (2026), FMA Annual Meeting (2026), Chicago Fed and University of Chicago Conference on Municipal Bond Markets (2026), International Institute of Public Finance Annual Congress (2026), Urban Economics Association North American Meeting (2025), and Northeastern University (2025)

Belief Formation in Retail Trading: Evidence from Active ETFs

with Da Huang

We study belief formation in retail trading and its implications for investors and the market. Using active exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as the setting, we show that ETFs with daily holdings disclosure attract significant copycat trading, whereas those with delayed disclosure do not. These herding, copycat trades are primarily from retail investors, while institutional investors do not herd. The herding trades destabilize stock prices from fundamental values and increase volatility. This paper suggests maximal transparency and disclosure may not always be optimal.