Recordkeepers in DC pension plans are often paid indirectly in the form of revenue sharing from third-party funds on the menu. We show that these arrangements affect the investment menu of 401(k) plans. Revenue-sharing funds are more likely to be added to the menu and are less likely to be...

Frequent, yet uninformed, fund flows in Chilean pension plans generate substantial trading in currency markets due to the high allocation to international securities. These non-fundamental flows have a significant impact on the Chilean peso, which is estimated to have a relatively low price...

type="main" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>Participants in defined contribution (DC) retirement plans rarely adjust their portfolio allocations, suggesting that their investment choices and consequent money flows are sticky and not discerning. However, participants’ inertia could be offset by DC plan sponsors, who...</p>

Investment taxes have a substantial impact on the performance of taxable mutual fund investors. Mutual funds can reduce the tax burdens of their shareholders by avoiding securities that are heavily taxed and by avoiding realizing capital gains that trigger higher tax burdens to the funds’...

This paper investigates whether mutual fund families acting as trustees of 401(k) plans display favoritism toward their own funds. Using a hand-collected dataset on retirement investment options, we show that poorly-performing funds are less likely to be removed from and more likely to be added...

Participants in defined contribution (DC) retirement plans rarely adjust their portfolio allocations, suggesting that their investment choices and consequent money flows are sticky and not discerning. Yet, the participants' inertia could be offset by the DC plan sponsors, who adjust the plan's...

Mutual funds change their risk levels significantly over time. Risk shifting might be caused by ill-motivated trades of unskilled or agency-prone fund managers who trade to increase their personal compensation. Alternatively, risk shifting might occur when skilled fund managers trade to take...

Despite extensive disclosure requirements, mutual fund investors do not observe all actions of fund managers. We estimate the impact of unobserved actions on fund returns using the return gap, which is defined as the difference between the reported fund return and the return of a portfolio that...