The purpose of this study is to discuss various types of agency conflicts that negatively impact mutual fund shareholder interests. In so doing, shareholders should get an improved understanding of conflicts that place them at such a disadvantage in fund investing. Many fund advisers are...

Using a regulation that increased portfolio disclosure frequency of US mutual funds as an exogenous shock shortening funds’ investment horizon, we find that affected funds influence portfolio firms to reduce the pay duration of their executives to incentivize them to also have shorter...

In this paper, using a unique database, we compare the performance of a set of equity mutual funds to a set of equity savings funds, which are similar to equity mutual funds in all but one characteristic: the tax regime that strongly penalizes withdrawals from equity savings funds. We found...

This study was based on the hypothesis that a fund manager has incentive to take more risk with funds to conceal his actual management ability. A theoretical model was built to test this hypothesis. According to the model, when a fund manager's ability is not observable, a poor fund manager may...

We develop a principal-agent model based on a sequential game played by a representative investor and a fund manager in an asymmetric information framework. The model shows that investors' perceptions of the fund market play the key role in the fund's fee-setting mechanism. The managers' true...

Agency conflicts can arise when a fund manager also chairs the board of the fund. We examine the consequences of this fund manager duality using a broad sample of single managed US equity funds. We find that duality managers significantly underperform non-duality managers. This underperformance...

We examine the determinants and consequences of mutual fund managers simultaneously managing multiple funds. Well-performing managers multitask by taking over poorly performing funds or launching new funds. Subsequent to multitasking, funds run by managers prior to multitasking (i.e., incumbent...

We examine the determinants and consequences of the multitasking phenomenon in the mutual fund industry where fund managers simultaneously manage multiple funds. We show that wellperforming managers multitask either by taking over poorly performing funds within fund companies (i.e., acquired...

We study the decisions and performance of managers who are also chair of the board (duality managers). We hypothesize that duality managers take more risky decisions and deliver worse performance than non-duality managers due to reduced level of control and replacement risk. Using the mutual...

Why do investors keep buying underperforming mutual funds? To address this issue, we develop a one-period principal-agent model with a representative investor and a fund manager in an asymmetric information framework. This model shows that the investors perception of the fund plays the key role...