However, the economic consequences of bereavement are hard to assess due to the lack of data and bereavement’s “hidden” nature. Some organizations have even fired bereaved employees for their seemingly lack of productivity.

As part of my research at the National University of Singapore Business School, I work to quantify the effects of bereavement on employee performance. We focus on money management because there is a lot at stake riding on the decisions made by professionals in this industry.

In Indonesia, the growing middle class has led to greater investment in mutual funds and sharia-based funds. One wrong decision can cost their clients and investors millions.

For my research, my collaborators and I focus on the United States mutual fund industry as it is the largest and arguably the most sophisticated fund industry. Its mutual fund industry stood at US$15 trillion with nearly 265 million shareholders in 2013.

We used data from various sources to identify fund managers employed in this industry, their demographic characteristics, and some details of their parental death. Our focus is on fund managers who had lost a parent while managing equity funds.

We focus on the fund manager’s performance using fund alpha — the superior performance relative to their investment risks — in three distinct four-month periods: the pre-event period of three to six months before the parental death; the “event” period consisting of two months prior to and after the parental death; and the post-event period.

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