How Fast Do Investors Learn? Asset Management Investors and Bayesian Learning

Abstract

Abstract We study the speed with which investors learn about managers’ skills by examining how quickly investor and managers’ beliefs converge. After showing our measure proxies for the change in the dispersion of beliefs, we find that hedge fund investors learn as fast as suggested by Bayes’ rule. However, we find mutual fund investors learn more slowly than suggested by Bayes’ rule. Mutual fund investors’ slow learning is not due to the use of different performance measures, institutional frictions, or lack of sophistication, but could be due to a low payoff from learning. Our results indicate learning speed depends on financial participants’ incentives.