Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Institutional Management And Institutional Trading, Jingi Ha

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation consists of three papers in mutual fund governance or market microstructure that analyze the causal effect of board independence on mutual fund performance or the trading behavior of institutional trading and informed trading.

Chapter I studies how board independence affects fund performance, in relation to investment experience of independent directors. Using the SEC amendment in 2001 as an exogenous shock, I find that board independence does not improve or damage fund performance on average. When a fund board has independent directors with investment experience, however, it boosts fund performance. I also find that a fund manager is less …