This paper investigates whether mutual fund families acting as service providers in 401(k) plans display favoritism toward their own affiliated funds. Using a hand-collected dataset on the menu of investment options offered to plan participants, we show that fund deletions and additions are less...

This paper investigates whether mutual fund families acting as service providers in 401(k) plans display favoritism toward their own affiliated funds. Using a hand-collected dataset on the menu of investment options offered to plan participants, we show that fund deletions and additions are less...

Two issues may have a tremendous impact on the adequacy of retirement income for today's workers: The growth of 401(k) pension plans and the possible privatization of Social Security. Workers are becoming increasingly responsible for the adequacy of their retirement income by determining how...

We investigate whether business ties with portfolio firms influence mutual funds' proxy voting using a comprehensive data set spanning 2003 to 2011. In contrast to prior literature, we find that business ties significantly influence pro-management voting at the level of individual pairs of fund...

This paper investigates whether mutual fund families acting as service providers in 401(k) plans display favoritism toward their own affiliated funds. Using a hand-collected dataset on the menu of investment options offered to plan participants, we show that fund deletions and additions are less...

This study examines how the efficiency of trading desks operated by mutual fund families affects the performance and trading of affiliated funds. We estimate the trading efficiency of a fund family's trading desk as the difference between the gross return of the family's index fund, which...

We study the economic significance of social dimensions in investment decisions by analyzing the holdings of U.S. equity mutual funds over the period 2004-2012. Using these holdings, we measure funds' exposures to socially sensitive stocks in order to answer two questions. What explains...

The central role of the media for people's minds and for capital markets has been analyzed by a broad range of literature, nourished from several strands of academic research. Applying a vector autoregression on a unique set of TV news, consumer sentiment and excess flows of mutual funds, I find...