doi:10.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102661engFleta-Asín, JorgeMuñoz, FernandoIn the name of the law: How does legal distance affect US international mutual funds’ financial performance?ART-2025-142118In this research, we investigate how the distance in legal features between investor and investee countries affects international mutual funds’ financial performance. We analyse a sample formed by 1160 US equity mutual funds in the period 2000–2021 (73,256 monthly portfolios) with an international investment vocation. Our results show that managers of mutual funds holding a portfolio that is exposed to more distant markets in terms of legal features jeopardize the financial performance delivered to investors. We also find a moderating factor whereby investing in larger stock markets alleviates the negative effect of the legal distance.2025http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/14894710.1016/j.ribaf.2024.102661http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/148947oai:zaguan.unizar.es:148947info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/AEI/PID2020-113338RB-I00info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/AEI/PID2022-136818NB-I00info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/LMP175_21info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/S38-20R-CIBERinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/S42-23R-CREVALORinfo:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/UZ-IBERCAJA/JIUZ-2022-CSJ-24info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/UZ/JIUZ-2021-SOC-02RESEARCH IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND FINANCE 74 (2025), 102661 [25 pp.]by-nc-ndhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess