Scholars have roundly criticized disclosure as a regulatory regime over the past decade for good reason. Disclosures—whether describing the terms of a loan or the risks of investing—purport to inform consumers. But who actually reads disclosures? We argue that mutual fund disclosures are...

Since the 2008 financial crisis, in which the Reserve Primary Fund "broke the buck," money market funds (MMFs) have been the subject of ongoing policy debate. Many commentators view MMFs as a key contributor to the crisis because widespread redemption demands during the days following the Lehman...

The Supreme Court's recent decision in Jones v. Harris Associates L.P. has highlighted the potential for agency conflicts in mutual funds, whose advisors have the de facto power to award themselves high fees. While the surrounding debate has focused on the extent to which market competition...

Mutual fund companies routinely advertise the past returns of their strong-performing, actively-managed equity funds. These performance advertisements imply that the advertised high past returns are likely to continue. Indeed, investors flock to these funds despite high past returns being a poor...

Unlike shareholders of ordinary companies, mutual fund shareholders do not sell their shares - they redeem them from the issuing funds for cash. We argue that this unique form of exit almost completely eliminates mutual fund investors' incentives to use voting, boards, and fee liability....

The AIFMD provides a harmonized European framework for regulating alternative investment funds. Prior to discussing its details, this chapter introduces to the AIFMD, discussing the developments that led to its adoption (Part 1), the AIFMD's principal objectives (Part 2) and its key tools for...

Actively managed mutual funds sell the potential to beat the market by picking stocks that are expected to outperform passive benchmarks like the S&P 500. Funds that are marketed as active vary substantially in the degree to which their portfolio holdings actually differ from the holdings of...

This comparative survey study examines the private fund industry's reactions and adjustments to a rapidly evolving regulatory framework, three years after the first application of mandatory registration and disclosure rules for private fund advisers under the Dodd-Frank Act. Using two datasets...

The growth of the hedge fund industry and the proliferation of retail alternative funds in combination with the fundamental reshaping of the regulatory landscape for the hedge fund industry suggest that mutual funds are becoming more like hedge funds as a matter of investment strategy while...

Title IV of the Dodd-Frank Act introduced the most significant regulatory change in the history of the private fund industry. To analyze the effect of Title IV on the private fund industry, we use five years of private fund performance data with over 7,000 reporting private funds. Our findings...