We investigate the performance of a sample of German mutual equity funds over the period from 1994 to 2003. Our general finding is that mutual funds, on average, hardly produce excess returns relative to their benchmark that are large enough to cover their expenses. This conclusion is drawn from...

The majority of financial trades take place in open and highly regulated markets. As an alternative venue, large asset managers sometimes offset the trades of affiliated funds in an internal market, without relying on external facilities or supervision. In this paper, we employ institutional...