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Optimal Fund Menus

Author

Listed:
  • Jaksa Cvitanic

    (California Institute of Technology - Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences)

  • Julien Hugonnier

    (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne - Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; Swiss Finance Institute)

Abstract

We study the optimal design of a menu of funds by a manager who is required to use linear pricing and does not observe the preferences of investors regarding one of the risky assets. The optimal menu involves bundling of assets and can be explicitly constructed from the solution to a calculus of variations problem that optimizes over the indirect utility that each type of investor receives. We provide a complete characterization of the optimal fund menu and show that the need to maintain incentive compatibility leads the manager to behave as a closet indexer by offering funds that are inefficiently tilted towards the asset which is not subject to the information friction.

Suggested Citation

  • Jaksa Cvitanic & Julien Hugonnier, 2018. "Optimal Fund Menus," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 18-47, Swiss Finance Institute, revised Aug 2018.
    • Handle: RePEc:chf:rpseri:rp1847
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mutual fund menus; screening; linear pricing; closet indexing;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C62 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium
    • C71 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Cooperative Games
    • D42 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Monopoly
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions

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