Playing favorites: Conflicts of interest in mutual fund management / by Diane Del Guercio, Egemen Genç, Hai Tran
Diane Del Guercio, Egemen Genç, Hai Tran
- Amsterdam Elsevier June 2018
- Pages 535-557
- Journal of Financial Economics 128 (3) 0304-405X .
Abstract We examine the performance of mutual funds whose managers simultaneously manage portfolios with performance-based incentive fees for three account types: mutual funds, hedge funds, and separate accounts. Importantly, our data set is free of selection bias because it is hand-collected from mandatory SEC filings. We find that only funds whose managers also manage hedge funds significantly underperform peer mutual funds. Moreover, underperformance begins only after fund managers begin to manage a hedge fund. We find that managerial incentives and opportunities for cross-subsidization explain variation in underperformance across funds, supporting the conflicts of interest hypothesis in the debate on “side-by-side management.”