Fiduciary duty may combat principal-agent problems in the provision of financial advice, but it may also impose costs … through legal liability. We study the effects of fiduciary duty on the deferred annuity market using transaction-level data …. Leveraging state-level variation in common law fiduciary duty, we find that it raises risk-adjusted returns by 25 bp without …

conflicts of interest, the Department of Labor proposed a rule in 2016 that would hold brokers to a fiduciary standard when … dealing with retirement accounts. We find that after the proposed fiduciary rule, the sales of high-expense variable annuities …-expense products. Based on our structural model estimates, investor welfare improved as a result of the fiduciary rule under …