Trust and Delegation

47 Pages Posted: 24 Nov 2009 Last revised: 8 Jun 2023

See all articles by Stephen J. Brown

Stephen J. Brown

New York University - Stern School of Business

William N. Goetzmann

Yale School of Management - International Center for Finance; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Bing Liang

University of Massachusetts Amherst - Department of Finance

Christopher Schwarz

University of California, Irvine - Finance Area

Multiple version iconThere are 3 versions of this paper

Date Written: November 2009

Abstract

Due to imperfect transparency and costly auditing, trust is an essential component of financial intermediation. In this paper we study a sample of 444 due diligence (DD) reports from a major hedge fund DD firm. A routine feature of due diligence is an assessment of integrity. We find that misrepresentation about past legal and regulatory problems is frequent (21%), as is incorrect or unverifiable representations about other topics (28%). Misrepresentation, the failure to use a major auditing firm, and the use of internal pricing are significantly related to legal and regulatory problems, indices of operational risk. We find that DD reports are typically performed after positive performance and investor inflows. We control for potential bias due to this and other potential conditioning. An operational risk score based on information contained in the DD reports significantly predicts subsequent fund failure and statistical performance characteristics out of sample. Finally we find that observed operational risk characteristics do not appear to moderate fund flow.

Suggested Citation

Brown, Stephen J. and Goetzmann, William N. and Liang, Bing and Schwarz, Christopher, Trust and Delegation (November 2009). NBER Working Paper No. w15529, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1510479

Stephen J. Brown

New York University - Stern School of Business ( email )

Stern School of Business
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William N. Goetzmann (Contact Author)

Yale School of Management - International Center for Finance ( email )

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National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

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Bing Liang

University of Massachusetts Amherst - Department of Finance ( email )

Amherst, MA 01003
United States

Christopher Schwarz

University of California, Irvine - Finance Area ( email )

Irvine, CA 92697-3125
United States

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