Essay 1: The Rise and Fall of Portfolio Pumping Among U.S. Mutual Funds,

Abstract: We construct a new measure that tightens the link between stock return patterns around quarter-ends and the likelihood that these patterns result from mutual fund portfolio pumping. Both the level and the concentration of mutual fund ownership explain temporary stock price increases at the end of the quarter. We show that pumping is particularly pronounced among the best- and worst-performing funds and that document a distinctive increase in this activity during the period 1997-2001. The sharp decrease in portfolio pumping afterwards is most likely due to academic and media attention which spawned investor activism and SEC enforcement actions. These changes in regulatory attention and scrutiny markedly affected the behavior of mutual fund managers. Essay 2: Outsourcing in the Mutual Fund Industry Abstract: In this paper I construct a unique dataset to examine outsourcing in the mutual fund industry. For the population of outsourced mutual funds I document that neither the performance nor the incentive structure differs significantly from mutual funds managed in-house. Yet for a smaller sample of funds managed by advisors tha