A Man’s World? Consumption-Based Investment in the Mutual Fund Industry

Grüner, Hans Peter, Alexandra Niessen-Ruenzi and Christoph Siemroth

No 20052, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We examine whether U.S. mutual fund managers invest in line with gender-specific consumption patterns. Male and female managers allocate investments differently across sectors, with consumption patterns closely linked to investment decisions. Portfolios with a stronger focus on consumption-related investments tend to be less risky, yield lower returns, and exhibit slightly weaker overall performance. Using a novel measure of portfolio masculinity, we find that more masculine portfolios underperform. A counterfactual analysis highlights potentially large shifts in some sector investments if women managed half the volume, compared to the current

Keywords: Mutual; funds (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G11 G21 G23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-03
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP20052 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20052

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP20052

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().