Doctors managing mutual funds: Returns to specialization in asset management

Abstract

We investigate the returns to specialized knowledge in asset management by comparing the performance of medical specialists versus generalists in managing healthcare sector mutual funds. Specialist alpha is 5% higher on an annualized basis. This result is robust to controlling for other observable characteristics and using different performance measures, subperiods, and variable definitions. The positive effect of a medical education on fund performance and specialists’ ability to time industry-specific events suggest that knowledge-based skills, rather than social connections, are key to specialist outperformance. Our paper provides new evidence on fund manager characteristics that provide a competitive advantage in generating alpha.