Together, these two seemingly unrelated bodies of research suggest that professional asset man- agers could be better able to choose local stocks under certain macroeconomic conditions. For instance, during the recent nancial crisis, we might expect that active UK asset managers would be valuable because of their ties to London nancial institutions, in the face of large asymmetric information on the value of banking stocks. On the other hand, during the technology collapse, we might prefer to invest in active Scandinavian managers, due to their specialized knowledge of local telecommunication companies{thus, helping to sort out which rms might recover most quickly. In essence, macroeconomic information can help.
