Fund Tradeoffs

55 Pages Posted: 2 Aug 2017 Last revised: 12 Aug 2020

See all articles by Lubos Pastor

Lubos Pastor

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business

Robert F. Stambaugh

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Lucian A. Taylor

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School

Multiple version iconThere are 4 versions of this paper

Date Written: January 9, 2020

Abstract

We study tradeoffs among active mutual funds' characteristics. In both our equilibrium model and the data, funds with larger size, lower expense ratio, and higher turnover hold more-liquid portfolios. Portfolio liquidity, a concept introduced here, depends not only on the liquidity of the portfolio's holdings but also on the portfolio's diversification. We also confirm other model-predicted tradeoffs: Larger funds are cheaper. Larger and cheaper funds are less active, based on our new measure of activeness. Better-diversified funds hold less-liquid stocks; they are also larger, cheaper, and trade more. These tradeoffs provide novel evidence of diseconomies of scale in active management.

Keywords: fund tradeoffs, fund characteristics, portfolio liquidity, diversification

JEL Classification: G11, G23

Suggested Citation

Pastor, Lubos and Stambaugh, Robert F. and Taylor, Lucian A., Fund Tradeoffs (January 9, 2020). Journal of Financial Economics (JFE), Forthcoming, Chicago Booth Research Paper No. 20-10, Fama-Miller Working Paper , Jacobs Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3011700 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3011700

Lubos Pastor (Contact Author)

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business ( email )

5807 S. Woodlawn Avenue
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773-702-0458 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.ChicagoGSB.edu/fac/lubos.pastor/

Robert F. Stambaugh

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School ( email )

The Wharton School, Finance Department
University of Pennsylvania
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United States
215-898-5734 (Phone)
215-898-6200 (Fax)

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

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Cambridge, MA 02138
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Lucian A. Taylor

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School ( email )

3641 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6365
United States

HOME PAGE: http://finance.wharton.upenn.edu/~luket/

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