Professor Felix Meschke from University of Minnesota is giving a VGSF research seminar on "The Rise and Fall of Portfolio Pumping Among U.S. Mutual Funds" on October 12 (Friday, 15:30-17:00), at Institute for Advanced Studies(HS II),Stumpergasse 56, 1060 Vienna. You can download the paper to be presented at the VGSF webpage (Activities & Events--> Research Seminars). The abstract of the paper is attached below. Professor Meschke is going to visit BWZ in the morning of Oct 12. If you would like to meet him at BWZ on Oct 12, please let me know as soon as possible. Kind regards, Youchang Wu We construct a new measure that tightens the link between stock return patterns around quarter- ends and the likelihood that these patterns result from mutual fund portfolio pumping. Both the level and the concentration of mutual fund ownership explain temporary stock price increases at the end of the quarter. We show that pumping is particularly pronounced among the best- and worst-performing funds and document a distinctive increase in this activity during the 1997-2001 period. The sharp decrease in portfolio pumping after 2001 is most likely due to academic and media attention that spawned investor activism and SEC enforcement actions. These changes in regulatory attention and scrutiny markedly affected the behavior of mutual fund managers.