IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v34y2021i6p3045-3094..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Marketing Mutual Funds

Author

Listed:
  • Nikolai Roussanov
  • Hongxun Ruan
  • Yanhao Wei
  • Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh

Abstract

Marketing and distribution expenses are responsible for about one-third of the cost of active management in the mutual fund industry. Estimating a structural model with costly investor search and learning about fund skill, we find that marketing is nearly as important as performance and fees in determining fund size. Eliminating marketing substantially improves welfare: capital shifts toward cheaper funds and competition decreases fees; active funds shrink and capital allocation becomes more closely aligned with skill. Declining investor search costs imply a reduction in marketing expenses and management fees as well as a shift toward passive investing, as observed empirically.

Suggested Citation

  • Nikolai Roussanov & Hongxun Ruan & Yanhao Wei & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, 2021. "Marketing Mutual Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(6), pages 3045-3094.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:34:y:2021:i:6:p:3045-3094.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhaa095
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhenling Jiang & Yanhao “Max” Wei & Tat Chan & Naser Hamdi, 2023. "Designing Dealer Compensation in the Auto-Loan Market: Implications from a Policy Change," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(5), pages 958-983, September.
    2. Ibert, Markus, 2023. "What do mutual fund managers’ private portfolios tell us about their skills?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    3. Kaniel, Ron & Lin, Zihan & Pelger, Markus & Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn, 2023. "Machine-learning the skill of mutual fund managers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(1), pages 94-138.
    4. Cordes, Henning & Nolte, Sven & Schneider, Judith C., 2023. "Dynamics of stock market developments, financial behavior, and emotions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    5. Dannhauser, Caitlin D. & Spilker, Harold D., 2023. "The Modern Mutual Fund Family," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(1), pages 1-20.
    6. Bjarne Florentsen & Ulf Nielsson & Peter Raahauge & Jesper Rangvid, 2022. "How Important is Affiliation Between Mutual Funds and Distributors for Fund Flows? [Is unbiased financial advice to retail investors sufficient? Answers from a large field study]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 26(4), pages 971-1009.
    7. Laurent Barras & Patrick Gagliardini & Olivier Scaillet, 2022. "Skill, Scale, and Value Creation in the Mutual Fund Industry," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 77(1), pages 601-638, February.
    8. Victor DeMiguel & Javier Gil-Bazo & Francisco J. Nogales & André A. P. Santos, 2021. "Can Machine Learning Help to Select Portfolios of Mutual Funds?," Working Papers 1245, Barcelona School of Economics.
    9. Coen, Patrick, 2021. "Information Loss over the Business Cycle," TSE Working Papers 21-1220, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    10. Katarzyna Perez & £ukasz Szymczyk, 2022. "Actual rate of the management fee in mutual funds of different styles," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 17(4), pages 969-1014, December.
    11. You, Yu & Yu, Zongdai & Zhang, Wenqiao & Lu, Lei, 2023. "FinTech platforms and mutual fund markets," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:34:y:2021:i:6:p:3045-3094.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.