Scale and Skill in Active Management

51 Pages Posted: 1 Sep 2013 Last revised: 11 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 Taylor

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School

Multiple version iconThere are 5 versions of this paper

Date Written: July 30, 2014

Abstract

We empirically analyze the nature of returns to scale in active mutual fund management. We find strong evidence of decreasing returns at the industry level: As the size of the active mutual fund industry increases, a fund's ability to outperform passive benchmarks declines. At the fund level, all methods considered indicate decreasing returns, though estimates that avoid econometric biases are insignificant. We also find that the active management industry has become more skilled over time. This upward trend in skill coincides with industry growth, which precludes the skill improvement from boosting fund performance. Finally, we find that performance deteriorates over a typical fund's lifetime. This result can also be explained by industry-level decreasing returns to scale.

Keywords: returns to scale, mutual funds, active management, skill

JEL Classification: G10, G20

Suggested Citation

Pastor, Lubos and Stambaugh, Robert F. and Taylor, Lucian, Scale and Skill in Active Management (July 30, 2014). Jacobs Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2318788 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2318788

Lubos Pastor (Contact Author)

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business ( email )

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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 Taylor

University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School ( email )

3641 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6365
United States

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