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Fiduciary Duty and the Market for Financial Advice

Author

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  • Vivek Bhattacharya
  • Gastón Illanes
  • Manisha Padi

Abstract

Fiduciary duty aims to solve principal-agent problems, and the United States is in the middle of a protracted debate surrounding the merits of extending it to all financial advisers. Leveraging a transaction-level dataset of deferred annuities and state-level variation in common law fiduciary duty, we find that it raises risk-adjusted returns by 25 bp and leads to a 16% decline in the entry of affected firms. Through the lens of a model of entry and advice provision, we argue that this effect can be due to both an increase in fixed costs and an increase in the cost of providing low-quality advice. We show how to disentangle these two effects. Model estimates indicate that both channels are important, and counterfactual simulations suggest that further increases in the stringency of fiduciary duty, such as a federal fiduciary standard, can further improve advice at the cost of reducing the number of firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Vivek Bhattacharya & Gastón Illanes & Manisha Padi, 2019. "Fiduciary Duty and the Market for Financial Advice," NBER Working Papers 25861, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25861
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Asriyan, Vladimir & Foarta, Dana & Vanasco, Victoria, 2018. "Strategic Complexity When Seeking Approval," Research Papers 3615, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    2. Mark Egan & Shan Ge & Johnny Tang, 2022. "Conflicting Interests and the Effect of Fiduciary Duty: Evidence from Variable Annuities," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 35(12), pages 5334-5386.
    3. Vladimir Asriyan & Dana Foarta & Victoria Vanasco, 2023. "The Good, the Bad, and the Complex: Product Design with Imperfect Information," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 187-226, May.
    4. Guiso, Luigi & Pozzi, Andrea & Tsoy, Anton & Gambacorta, Leonardo & Mistrulli, Paolo Emilio, 2022. "The cost of steering in financial markets: Evidence from the mortgage market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(3), pages 1209-1226.
    5. Bruhn, Jesse & Imberman, Scott & Winters, Marcus, 2022. "Regulatory arbitrage in teacher hiring and retention: Evidence from Massachusetts Charter Schools," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 215(C).
    6. Bernardita Vial & Pilar Alcalde, 2020. "Intermediary Commissions in a Regulated Market with Heterogeneous Customers," Documentos de Trabajo 532, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • K15 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Civil Law; Common Law
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation
    • L84 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Personal, Professional, and Business Services

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