52 Pages Posted: 23 Mar 2017 Last revised: 20 Nov 2018

Date Written: August 15, 2018

Abstract

We document that investors allocate more flows to hedge funds whose names exhibit gravitas -defined as a combination of words from geopolitics and economics, or suggesting power. The economic effects are relatively large: averaging across our models, adding one more word with gravitas to the name of the average fund brings over $300,000 more in quarterly flows. We also document that having a name with gravitas is associated with abnormal negative performance: high name gravitas funds have lower returns, alphas, Sharpe ratios and manipulation-proof performance measures, higher volatilities and maximum drawdowns as well as higher probabilities of extinction than the funds with lower name gravitas. Although we find evidence that investors learn about the true investment abilities of their funds and respond less to gravitas as they do so, the gravitas-chasing behavior survives all these controls and totals more than 5% of the overall assets managed by hedge funds. From the point of view of hedge fund managers, we document that funds with more name gravitas report to fewer databases, suggesting that giving the fund a "good" name serves as an alternative form of marketing. Finally, we show that our results are robust to a generous battery of additional tests, including corrections for potential endogeneity issues or for whether the fund only accepts qualified investors.