This study uses the portion of a new Total Expense Ratio construct that discloses the reality of adviser/distributor payments of distribution fees (hidden) to sales brokers behind the mutual fund curtain. Distribution fees consist of dealer (broker) concessions, account servicing (12b-1) fees),...

1. The AMEX provides market liquidity and continuous trading at or near current market prices for index shares. Continuous trading provides more flexibility in rebalancing portfolios. Prices are determined by supply and demand. Index shares may be traded in small lots and the trading strategies...

The mutual funds industry does not compete on price. Mutual fund managers are the primary beneficiaries of fund economies of scale. Mutual fund managers charge too much for management fees. Multiple share class funds have higher management fees and total expenses than single class funds....

This article provides a broad treatment of transparency and the specific normative data and information that are essential to make transparency effective for meeting the normative needs of shareholders. The template offered here is a tool for providing transparency in normative mutual fund...

The purpose of this study is to discuss research that identifies heterogeneous mutual fund and investor attributes and relations that explain dispersion in fund fees. One might think there is a short list of attributes and relations, such as high versus low expense ratios, that tells the full...

The controversy about whether mutual fund shareholders should invest primarily in actively managed funds or index funds continues. But, while there may be a small number of portfolio managers who provide evidence of persistency in high performance (assuming they meet the daunting statistical...

The study reviews important interactions between mutual funds and individual investors in choosing equity mutual funds. An important question is why both sophisticated and unsophisticated investors continue to invest in actively managed funds that generally underperform. Actively managed funds...