Broken Promises, Competition, and Capital Allocation in the Mutual Fund Industry

Abstract

What characteristics of mutual funds do investors care about? In addition to performance and fees, we show that investors exhibit a clear preference for managers who adhere to the strategies they describe in their prospectuses. Capital flows respond negatively when funds diverge from the average holdings of their text-based strategy peer groups, but positively when they outperform those peer averages. We identify this effect using a novel instrumental variables approach, and show that funds face a delicate trade-off between keeping their promises and outperforming their peers who make similar promises.

Keywords: Mutual Fund Strategies, Prospectuses, Industrial Organization, Fund Flows, Machine Learning

JEL Classification: G11, G23, L10