Does Social Interaction Spread Fear Among Institutional Investors? Evidence from Coronavirus Disease 2019
研究了2020年上半年社会关联如何影响主动型共同基金经理的交易行为，发现与疫情热点地区有社会联系的基金经理抛售更多股票，且这种社交互动对基金业绩有负面影响，但取决于经理能力。
We study how social connectedness affected active mutual fund manager trading behavior in the first half of 2020. In the first quarter during which the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak occurred, fund managers located in or socially connected to COVID-19 hotspots sold more stock holdings compared with a control group of unconnected managers. The economic impact of social connectedness on stock holdings was comparable with that of COVID-19 hotspots and was elevated among “epicenter” stocks most susceptible to the pandemic shock. In the second quarter, social interaction had an overall negative effect on fund performance, but this effect depended on manager skill; unskilled managers who were connected to the hotspots underperformed, whereas skillful managers suffered no deleterious effect. Our evidence suggests that social connections can intensify salience bias for all but the most skilled institutional investors, and policy makers should be wary of the destabilizing role of social networks during market downturns. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance. Funding: This work was supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4814 .