Democratic Fund Managers Outperformed Republican Fund Managers

Straight from the Mercatus Institute, libertarian

Tyler Cowen notes that fund managers who donate to Democrats outperformed fund managers who donated to Republicans. The difference is small compared to the huge volatility of stock market returns, but it is not small compared to the variance of the performance of the two groups of fund managers.

In particular

The authors find that for the years 2004 to 2014, with the exception of one period, equity fund managers of the two political affiliations did about the same. [skip]

A second conclusion is that for one critical period of time, December 2008 to September 2009, the Democratic fund managers did much better. They earned 25.25 percent on average, compared with the Republicans’ 17.17 percent — a difference that, by the authors’ back-of-the envelope calculations, amounted to about $13.7 billion.

Needless to say, Paul Krugman told him so.

Also

a separate (and harder to explain) period of superior Democratic performance from May 2003 to September 2003, when Republicans controlled the major branches of the federal government.

The data sample contained no comparable periods in which the Republicans did better, though I have heard anecdotal reports that conservative and libertarian-leaning managers had a much superior understanding of the late 1970s and the Reagan recovery of the 1980s.

Ah yes the Reagan recovery. Note the data which show superior performance by Democrats and the anecdotal reports or Republican superiority. Also note that for Republican economists, it is always 1973-1991 (except for 1981-2 which doesn’t count).