Unlike shareholders of ordinary companies, mutual fund shareholders do not sell their shares - they redeem them from the issuing funds for cash. We argue that this unique form of exit almost completely eliminates mutual fund investors' incentives to use voting, boards, and fee liability....

Building on the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Jones v. Harris Associates, this paper presents the first comprehensive empirical study of mutual fund excessive fee liability under section 36(b) of the Investment Company Act. We use a hand-collected dataset of all excessive fee...

Actively managed mutual funds sell the potential to beat the market by picking stocks that are expected to outperform passive benchmarks like the S&P 500. Funds that are marketed as active vary substantially in the degree to which their portfolio holdings actually differ from the holdings of...

We identify a number of serious mechanical flaws in the statutes and judicial doctrines that organize fee liability for mutual fund managers. Originating in section 36(b) of the Investment Company Act, this form of liability allows investors to sue managers for charging fees above a judicially...

Notwithstanding ERISA's fiduciary requirements, a significant portion of 401(k) plans establish investment menus with options that predictably lead to substantial underperformance of retirement portfolios. Utilizing data from more than 3,500 401(k) plans with more than $120 billion in assets, we...

Major index fund operators have been criticized as ineffective stewards of the firms in which they are now the largest shareholders. While scholars debate whether this passivity is a serious problem, index funds' generally docile approach to ownership is broadly acknowledged. However, this...