This Article analyzes the conduct of mutual funds in shareholder litigation. We begin byreviewing the basic forms of shareholder litigation and the benefits such claims might offermutual fund investors. We then investigate, through an in-depth docket review, whetherand how the ten largest mutual...

This Article offers a theory of mutual fund voting to answer when mutual funds should vote on behalf of their investors and when they should not. It argues that voting authority for mutual funds ought to depend upon: (1) whether the fund possesses a comparative informational advantage, and (2)...

This Article examines the large, steady, and continuing growth of the Big Three index fund managers — BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Global Advisors. We show that there is a real prospect that index funds will continue to grow, and that voting in most significant public companies will...

We examine the governance role of delegated portfolio managers. In our model, investors decide how to allocate their wealth between passive funds, active funds, and private savings, and asset management fees are endogenously determined. Funds' ownership stakes and asset management fees determine...

Despite their incredible popularity and importance to modern capital markets, exchange traded funds (ETFs) are extremely difficult to compare side-by-side. Investors who successfully navigate the initial challenges of product choice overload, and opaque index construction methodology, soon...

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...

Mutual funds are structurally different from other corporations. The corporation or trust is controlled by an external entity, an investment management firm that profits from fees charged to manage the fund's portfolio. Recognizing this fundamental conflict of interest, in 1970 Congress made...

This chapter for an upcoming handbook on mutual funds (by Edward Elgar Publishing) offers an overview of the mutual fund market and the investors who inhabit it. On the supply side, mutual funds hold $16 trillion in financial assets and have become the largest component of our private retirement...

Fund managers are double agents; they serve both fund investors and owners of management firms. This conflict of interest may result in trading to support securities prices. Tests of this hypothesis in the Spanish mutual fund industry indicate that bank-affiliated mutual funds systematically...