INVESTOR TAX-TRADING OPPORTUNITIES AND DISCOUNTS ON CLOSED-END MUTUAL FUNDS

Discounts on closed-end mutual funds are a puzzle to financial economists, because arbitrage activities should eliminate discounts in a perfect capital market. In this paper I develop a model that explains discounts, using Merton's option pricing theorem. By holding shares of a closed-end mutual fund, investors lose valuable tax-trading opportunities associated with the constituent securities of the closed-end mutual fund's portfolio. However, investors can take advantage of all tax-trading opportunities by directly holding the closed-end mutual fund's portfolio. I also show that both variances of individual securities and correlations among securities in the portfolio are important factors in determining the magnitude of discounts.