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...

We examine the dynamics of assets under management (AUM) and management fees at the portfolio manager level in the closed-end fund industry. We find that managers capitalize on good past performance and favorable investor perceptions about future performance, as reflected in fund premiums,...

Active fund managers implicitly promise to research profitable portfolio selection. But active management is an experience good subject to moral hazard. Investors cannot tell high from low quality up front and therefore fear manager shirking. We show how the parties mitigate the moral hazard by...

The distribution strategies of mutual funds directly or indirectly affect both their growth and their revenues. The extent of resources dedicated by a fund to its distribution channel(s) is therefore an important strategic decision. For a sample of US diversified equity mutual funds in the...

Theory predicts that capping brokers' compensation exacerbates the exploitation of retail investors. We show that regulated caps on mutual fund 12b-1 fees, effectively sales commissions, are associated with negative equity fund performance, but only after a structural shift toward maximum...

The purpose of this study is to discuss research that identifies heterogeneous mutual fund and investor attributes and relations that explain dispersion in fund fees. One might think there is a short list of attributes and relations, such as high versus low expense ratios, that tells the full...

Mutual funds are captives of the investment management firms, also known as fund sponsors, that bring them into existence and provide for their day-to-day operations. Because fund sponsors exercise complete control over the operations of their funds, the possibility arises that a fund sponsor...

The purpose of this study is to discuss research that identifies heterogeneous mutual fund and investor attributes and relations that explain dispersion in fund fees. One might think there is a short list of attributes and relations, such as high versus low expense ratios, that tells the full...

Previous work shows large differences in fees for S&P 500 index funds and other funds, and suggests that investors suffer wealth losses investing in high-fee funds when similar low-fee funds are available. In contrast, the neoclassical model of mutual funds (Berk and van Binsbergen, 2015) argues...

In 2004 the SEC began requiring mutual funds to include the dollar amount of fund fees in shareholders reports. Before that, funds reported returns net of fees and didn't disclose fees separately. This natural experiment allows me to study the impact of separate reporting of fees on the level of...