Pricing of Mutual Fund Services in Retirement Plans: Evidence from Open-End Equity Funds

Management fees of mutual funds are more costly to investors than is often realized. Moreover, research indicates that in many cases, the fees are not related to performance, contrary to what might be expected from an efficient market. This study uses sample data to illustrate the consequences of inefficiency to an individual investor. It then turns to an empirical examination of the determinants of the ratio of management fees to total assets (MER), investigating market concentration, fund performance, and non-performance characteristics as explanatory variables. All of these classes of variables contributed to the variation of MERs . JEL Classification G23     

The Use and Abuse of Mutual Fund Expenses

Prior research shows that mutual fund investors are often aware of up-front charges like sales loads, but they are less mindful of annual operating expenses, even though both types of fees lower overall performance. This study documents the historical trend and recent abuse of annual mutual fund expenses. As the industry becomes more adept at segmenting customers by level of investment sophistication, we claim that load mutual fund companies take advantage of this ability and charge higher expenses to their target customer: the less-knowledgeable investor. No-load fund companies, which tend to attract the more sophisticated investor, offer lower expenses. For example, over 2000–2004 the average annual expense ratio of load equity funds was 50 basis points higher than no-load equity funds. We show evidence of this widening cost disparity since the early 1990s among new and existing equity, bond, and index funds. We also document a growing abuse of sales distribution or 12b-1 fees among funds that are closed to new investors, almost all of which are load funds. Thus, load fund investors are more susceptible to paying higher expenses and receiving lower returns over time. Todd Houge is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Iowa. Jay Wellman is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Binghamton University.     

The Ethical Mutual Fund Performance Debate: New Evidence from Canada

Although the academic interest in ethical mutual fund performance has developed steadily, the evidence to date is mainly sample-specific. To tackle this critique, new research should extend to unexplored countries. Using this as a motivation, we examine the performance and risk sensitivities of Canadian ethical mutual funds vis-à-vis their conventional peers. In order to overcome the methodological deficiencies most prior papers suffered from, we use performance measurement approaches in the spirit of Carhart (1997, Journal of Finance 52(1): 57–82) and Ferson and Schadt (1996, Journal of Finance 51(2): 425–461). In doing so, we investigate the aggregated performance and investment style of ethical and conventional mutual funds and allow for time variation in the funds’ systematic risk. Our␣Canadian evidence supports the conjecture that any␣performance differential between ethical mutual funds and their conventional peers is statistically insignificant.      

Mutual Fund Incubation and the Role of the Securities and Exchange Commission

A mutual fund family incubates a fund when it creates a privately subsidized fund not available to the general investing public. It destroys unsuccessful incubator funds. The few successful funds will report higher incubation returns than the market return in advertisements intended to attract money from individual investors. This practice is currently allowed by the SEC. The evidence is that incubation returns are not a good predictor of subsequent fund performance and likely serve to mislead unsuspecting investors. University of Notre Dame Finance Professor Carl Ackermann received a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). University of Notre Dame Finance Professor Tim Loughran received a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Illinois (Urbana), an MBA from Indiana University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois (Urbana).     

试论明清之际消费伦理观的新变与社会转型——以“士商互动”为视角

明清之际中国社会经济日益繁盛,城市商业强劲发展,加上政治上的波荡起伏,社会各阶层相互间的流动与渗透日益加剧,出现了“士商互动”的社会潮流,这诸多方面共同促成整个社会消费伦理观的变化。这些新变化,既表现在文化消费上的趋新与通俗、物质消费上的尚奢与夸富,又表现为部分有识之士着眼于国民经济的发展,而对奢靡之风进行的冷静反拔。