Incentive Fees with a Moving Benchmark and Portfolio Selection under Loss Aversion

This paper studies, in a unified and dynamic framework, the impact of fund managers compensation (symmetric and asymmetric fees including a penalty component) as well as their investment in the fund when managers exhibit a loss aversion utility function. Contrary to the vast majority of the existing literature, the benchmark portfolio, relative to which a fund's performance is measured, is risky. The optimal portfolio value comprises a call option and a term resembling the optimal value when the benchmark is riskless. The proportion invested in the risky security is a speculative position, while the fraction invested in the benchmark contains both a hedging addend and a speculative element. Our model and simulations show that (i) a risky benchmark substantially modifies the manager's allocation compared to a riskless benchmark; (ii) optimal positions are less risky when the manager is compensated by symmetric fees or faces a penalty; (iii) a relatively large manager's stake (30%) in the fund considerably reduces her risk-taking behaviour and results in an almost identical terminal portfolio value for the different fees schemes; (iv) optimal weights significantly react to different parameter values; (v) these results may have important implications on regulation.