Pension fund manager skills over the economic cycle: the (non-)specialization cost

Mercedes Alda

The European Journal of Finance, 2018, vol. 24, issue 1, 36-58

Abstract: We study whether pension fund managers, as professionals of important social and financial products, are able to add value for their clients and adapt to economic changes. To this end, we analyze the performance and skills (market timing and stock picking) over the economic cycle from both pension fund and manager perspectives. This double analysis allows examining whether skills reside in managers and/or funds and control for manager substitutions. Despite the long-term nature of pension funds, we find that both fund and manager skills vary with market conditions, showing better evidence of stock-picking in booms, and of market timing in recessions. Nonetheless, top (bottom) funds and managers exhibit both (incorrect) skills in booms and in recessions. Some of the top (bottom) funds and managers are the best (worst) in both abilities in the same periods, but not in different periods, showing that not all managers have the ability to adapt to market conditions. Additionally, managers with limited skills tend to specialize because diversification requires multi-task skills and the non-specialization of these managers usually results in incorrect skills.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1351847X.2016.1239585 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:eurjfi:v:24:y:2018:i:1:p:36-58

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REJF20

DOI: 10.1080/1351847X.2016.1239585

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of Finance is currently edited by Chris Adcock

More articles in The European Journal of Finance from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().