Using data from surveys as well as as real transactions we analyze which and why investors choose funds with performance fees even though these funds may be more expensive. According to agency theory, performance fees could incentivize managers to achieve better returns, but they could also...

In this paper we consider a loss averse investor equipped with a specific, but still quite general, utility function motivated by behavioral finance. We show that under some concrete assumptions about the form of this utility one can derive closed-form solutions for the investor's portfolio...

We document evidence that mutual funds, on average, are averse to investing in tax-avoiding firms, which seems anomalous given the potential for two likely motives. Mutual fund managers' compensation incentives may lead them to prefer tax-avoiding firms, or the fact that mutual funds are...

We use price pressure resulting from purchases by mutual funds with large capital inflows to identify overvalued equity. This is a relatively exogenous overvaluation indicator as it is associated with who is buying, buyers with excess liquidity, rather than what is being purchased. We document...

Mutual fund portfolio turnover ratios (PTR) are at the center of the short-termism debate, which criticizes corporate maneuvers taken to prop up near-term earnings at the expense of long-term, value focused investments and policies. Scholars and policymakers often rely on portfolio turnover...

Gil–Bazo and Ruiz–Verdú (2009) show that fund families strategically exploit the low performance sensitivity of investors, i.e., investors’ low elasticity of demand with respect to performance, to increase fund fees. Given that environmentally, socially and governance (ESG) focused...

In choosing a glide path strategy for asset allocation over their working lives, retirement savers face a tradeoff between the higher expected wealth provided by strategies that maintain or increase equity holdings over time, against the greater potential security offered from shifting into more...

Basu and Drew (in the JPM Spring 2009 issue) argue that lifecycle asset allocation strategies are counterproductive to the retirement savings goals of typical individual investors. Because of the portfolio size effect, most portfolio growth will occur in the years just before retirement when...

This paper studies the investment behavior of investors and fund managers within the mutual funds industry. We find that investors are biased in their fund purchase decisions in a way described by prospect theory: The prospect theory value predicts future fund flows, even though it is not...

Over the past 30 years, mutual funds have become the dominant vehicle through which individual investors prepare for retirement via defined contribution plans. Further, money market mutual funds, which hold $2.7 trillion as of September 2013, are now a major part of the cash economy in the U.S....