Ostensibly passive index funds and ETFs are surprisingly active. A third of these funds exhibit more activeness than the median actively managed fund, as measured by conventional proxies. Using hand-collected prospectus data, we find that "passive" funds offer an increasingly wide assortment of...

We survey 2,484 U.S. individuals with at least $1 million of investable assets about how well leading academic theories describe their financial beliefs and decisions. The most important factors determining portfolio equity share are professional advice, time until retirement, personal...

We survey a representative sample of U.S. individuals about how well leading academic theories describe their financial beliefs and decisions. We find substantial support for many factors hypothesized to affect portfolio equity share, particularly background risk, investment horizon, rare...