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Finance and Financial Management Commons

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Selected Works

Laurie Prather

Mutual funds

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Finance and Financial Management

Emerging Market Mutual Funds: Recent Trends In Performance, Expenses, Composition And Growth, Will Bertin, Laurie Prather, Li-Anne Woo Jul 2014

Emerging Market Mutual Funds: Recent Trends In Performance, Expenses, Composition And Growth, Will Bertin, Laurie Prather, Li-Anne Woo

Laurie Prather

Emerging market mutual funds are a rapidly growing mutual fund category. This growth is most likely due to their impressive realized returns, although their returns may be quite volatile. This study reports on emerging market mutual funds' characteristics and performance relative to domestic and international equity mutual funds and also details the significant growth in these funds. We further consider the investment allocations of the three categories of funds among developing versus mature markets. Our results suggest that the superior performance of emerging market mutual funds more than adequately compensates for their higher risk, and thus provides a sound justification …


Management Structure And The Performance Of Funds Of Mutual Funds, William Bertin, Laurie Prather Jul 2010

Management Structure And The Performance Of Funds Of Mutual Funds, William Bertin, Laurie Prather

Laurie Prather

A rapidly growing mutual fund category is funds of funds (FOFs) which invest in other mutual funds instead of individual securities. This study reports on FOFs' characteristics and performance relative to traditional equity mutual funds and finds that FOFs compare favorably. FOFs with identified managers outperform their unidentified counterparts, and FOFs that invest in-family outperform both traditional equity funds and those FOFs investing out-of-family. Finally, replicating FOFs' holdings can be prohibitively expensive since they commonly hold funds with high minimum initial investments, closed funds and/or funds that are restricted to a particular investor type.


Mutual Fund Characteristics, Managerial Attributes, And Fund Performance, Laurie Prather, William Bertin, Thomas Henker Nov 2009

Mutual Fund Characteristics, Managerial Attributes, And Fund Performance, Laurie Prather, William Bertin, Thomas Henker

Laurie Prather

This study provides a comprehensive examination of recent mutual fund performance by analyzing a large set of both mutual funds and fund attributes in an effort to link performance to fund-specific characteristics. The results indicate that the hypothesized relationships between performance and the explanatory variables are generally upheld. After taking into consideration general market conditions and fund investment objective, the characteristic variables that relate to fund popularity, growth, cost, and management also explain performance. Finally, after controlling for survivorship and benchmark error as well as fund-specific factors, the results refute the performance persistence phenomenon.