In the mutual fund industry, there is a unique endogeneity between managers and investors. If a manager wants to lower fees in the hopes of attracting investors, the investors will not react unless they believe the manager will maintain low fees for a period of time. A binding contract is one...

We consider how fund managers respond to the conflicting preferences of their investors. We focus on the conflict between the taxable and retirement accounts of international funds, which face different tradeoffs between dividends and capital gains. In principle, managers could resolve this...

The standard analysis of corporate governance is that shareholders vote in the ratios that firms choose, such as one-share-one-vote. But if the cost of unbundling and trading votes is sufficiently low, then shareholders vote in the ratios that they themselves choose. We document an active market...

Over half of money fund managers voluntarily waive fees they have a contractual right to claim. Moreover, as a consequence of fee waivers, funds on average collect one half of reported expense ratios. Variation in fee waivers is significant and relates to differences in relative performance....

One reason why funds charge different prices to their investors is that they face different demand curves. One source of differentiation is asset retention: Performance-sensitive investors migrate from worse to better prospects, taking their performance sensitivity with them. In the...

This article documents various demographic factors which influence mutual fund turnover including managerial experience, location, education, and gender. On average, funds in financial centers trade more but this excess turnover declines with experience. While most extra trading is concentrated...