Chris Shwarz

Christopher Schwarz’s research interests include the management, disclosure, and operational risk of the investment fund industry and the impact of manager incentives and structure on investment fund performance. His research has been published in such leading academic journals as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and included in testimony before the U.S. Congress House Financial Services Committee.

Professor Schwarz has been at the Paul Merage School of Business since July 2008. Prior to arriving at UCI, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. During his doctoral studies, he was also a Visiting Doctoral Fellow at Yale University’s International Center of Finance in 2007 and the Advisory Editor at the Review of Financial Studies. He received his B.S. from Babson College in Wellesley, MA. Prior to receiving his doctorate, Professor Schwarz worked in the IT industry writing custom applications for medium sized businesses.

Publications

• “Are Hedge Fund Managers Systematically Misreporting? Or Not?” with Philippe Jorion, 2013, Journal of Financial Economics, 111, 311-327.
• “The Strategic Listing Decisions of Hedge Funds,” with Philippe Jorion, 2013, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, forthcoming.
• “Decision Making and Risk Aversion in the Cash Cab,” with Richard Bliss and Mark Potter, 2012, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 84, 163 – 173.
• “Mutual Fund Tournaments: The Sorting Bias and New Evidence,” 2012, Review of Financial Studies, 25, 913 – 936.
• “Trust and Delegation,” with Stephen J. Brown, William Goetzmann and Bing Liang, 2012, Journal of Financial Economics, 103, 221 – 234 (lead article).
• “Tax Equalization in Mutual Funds,” with Steve Gill, Journal of the American Tax Association, 2011, forthcoming.
• “Estimating Operational Risk for Hedge Funds: The ω-score,” with Stephen J. Brown, William Goetzmann and Bing Liang, 2009, Financial Analyst Journal 65, 43—53. (Graham and Dodd Award for Best Paper)
• “Mandatory Disclosure and Operational Risk: Evidence from Hedge Fund Registration,” with Stephen J. Brown, William Goetzmann and Bing Liang, 2008, Journal of Finance 63, 2785—2815.
• “Performance Characteristics of Individual vs. Team Managed Mutual Funds,” with Richard Bliss and Mark Potter, 2008, Journal of Portfolio Management 34, 110—119.
• “The Progeny of CAPM,” with Sanjay Nawalkha, 2004, Journal of Investment Management, 2, 1522—1540.
• “L(2,1)-labelings of the Cartesian products of two cycles,” with Denise Troxell, 2006, Discrete Applied Mathematics, 154, 1522—1540.

Working Papers

• “Do Market Participants Care about Portfolio Disclosure? Evidence from Hedge Funds’ 13F Filings,” with Stephen Brown
• “The Delisting Bias in Hedge Fund Databases,” with Philippe Jorion.
• “Is Pay for Performance Effective? Evidence from the Hedge Fund Industry,” with Bing Liang.
• “Revisiting Mandatory Portfolio Disclosure,” with Mark E. Potter.

Work In Progress

• “Utility of Disclosure in Highly Regulated Environments,” with Stephen J. Brown, William Goetzmann and Bing Liang.
• “Resolving Uncertainty: The Case of Mutual Funds,” with Zheng Sun.

Awards

• Excellence in Teaching, Fully Employed MBA, 2012, 2013
• Excellence in Teaching, Full-Time MBA, 2011, 2012, 2013

Education

PhD, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

BS, Babson College