We develop a new method for detecting portfolio manager activity. Our method relies exclusively on portfolio returns and, consequently, avoids the pitfalls associated with disclosed portfolio holdings. We investigate the link between activity and performance of actively managed U.S. equity funds...

We evaluate the performance of 51 mutual fund families based on a study of their diversified US managed mutual funds over an 11 year period and explore the determinants of performance gross of published expenses. We find that mutual fund families which charge loads, high expenses to their most...

This paper shows that portfolio constraints have important implications for management compensation and performance evaluation. In particular, in the presence of portfolio constraints, allowing for benchmarking can be beneficial. Benchmark design arises as an alternative effort inducement...

We study the effects that relative (to a benchmark) performance evaluation has on the provision of incentives for the search of private information when managers are exogenously constrained in their ability to sell short and purchase on margin. With these portfolio constraints we show that...