We find a puzzling fact about the mutual fund industry that funds operating in more competitive segments charge higher fees. We argue that this surprising positive relation between competition and fund fees is consistent with strategic fee setting by funds. Fund performance is better and more...

In this paper, I study the impact of market competition on mutual fund marketing expenses. In a sample of US domestic equity mutual funds, I find that marketing expenses decrease with the competition. This effect is stronger for top-performing funds. These results are counterintuitive, as one...

We study the performance consequences of exposure to corporate social responsibility (CSR) through stock holdings for mutual funds. Using a large sample of U.S. domestic mutual funds, we find that funds overweighting low-CSR stocks outperform funds underweighting them by between 1.7% and 2.6%...

This paper analyses the impact of more frequent portfolio disclosure on mutual funds' performance. Since 2004, SEC requires all U.S. mutual funds to disclose their portfolio holdings on a quarterly basis from semi-annual previously. This change in regulation provides a natural setting to study...

In 2004 the SEC began requiring mutual funds to include the dollar amount of fund fees in shareholders reports. Before that, funds reported returns net of fees and didn't disclose fees separately. This natural experiment allows me to study the impact of separate reporting of fees on the level of...

In this paper, we investigate investment flows into mutual funds that hold more high corporate social responsible stocks (top CSR funds) vs. mutual funds that hold more low corporate social responsible stocks (bottom CSR funds). Using a large sample of equity mutual funds spanning 2003–2012,...

We studied various fund investing options in the circular economy sector. We found that most circular economy mutual funds and exchange-traded funds charge higher fees and take higher risks than their benchmarks. However, they appear to have underperformed their benchmarks during their short...