Measuring Innovation and Product Differentiation: Evidence from Mutual Funds
通过分析基金招募说明书的文本独特性来度量创新与产品差异化，发现小型基金家族产品更独特，独特策略能吸引更多资金流入，且投资者对文本独特性反应强于持仓或收益独特性。
ABSTRACT We study innovation and product differentiation using a uniqueness measure based on textual analysis of prospectuses. We find that small and start‐up families have higher start rates than larger families, and their products are more unique. Unique strategies attract more inflows in the first three years, and investors respond more to text‐based uniqueness than other measures such as holdings or returns uniqueness. For established funds, word uniqueness has weak negative power for explaining returns, so investors in competitive equilibrium do not sacrifice much performance to get specialized products. Uniqueness attenuates the flow‐performance relation, reducing the risk of investor outflows.