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Peer Versus Pure Benchmarks in the Compensation of Mutual Fund Managers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2023

Richard Evans Open the ORCID record for Richard Evans [Opens in a new window] ,
Juan-Pedro Gómez ,
Linlin Ma  and
Yuehua Tang
Richard Evans
Affiliation:
University of Virginia Darden School of Business evansr@darden.virginia.edu
Juan-Pedro Gómez
Affiliation:
IE University IE Business School juanp.gomez@ie.edu
Linlin Ma*
Affiliation:
Peking University HSBC Business School
Yuehua Tang
Affiliation:
University of Florida Warrington College of Business yuehua.tang@warrington.ufl.edu
*
linlin.ma@phbs.pku.edu.cn (corresponding author)
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Abstract

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We examine the role of peer (e.g., Lipper manager indices) versus pure (e.g., S&P 500) benchmarks in fund manager compensation. We model their impact on manager incentives and then test those predictions using novel data. We find that 71% of managers are compensated based on peer benchmarks. Consistent with the model, peer-benchmarked fund managers exhibit higher effort generating higher gross performance and collect higher fee income. Analyzing advisors’ choice between benchmark types, we show that peer-benchmarking advisors cater to more sophisticated and performance-sensitive investors, and are more likely to sell through direct channels, consistent with investor heterogeneity and market segmentation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis , First View , pp. 1 - 38
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington

Footnotes

We thank two anonymous referees, Li An, Matthijs Breugem, Jennifer Conrad (the editor), Sangeun Ha, Leonard Kostovetsky, Jiacui Li, Pedro Matos, Ľuboš Pástor, Alvaro Remesal, Pablo Ruiz-Verdú, Sergei Sarkissian, Philipp Schuster, Michael Sockin, Yang Song, Sheridan Titman, Youchang Wu, and seminar and conference participants at the 2019 Asset Management Conference at ESMT Berlin, 2021 AEFIN Finance Forum, 2019 PHBS Workshop in Macroeconomics and Finance, 2020 Northern Finance Association Conference, 2021 New Zealand Finance Meeting, CEU Cardenal Herrera University, Collegio Carlo Alberto at the University of Torino, CUNEF University, Oklahoma State University, and the University of Virginia for their comments and suggestions. We also thank Changhyun Ahn, Liling Huang, Michael Del Monte, Andrew Han, Joseph Lally, Anna Potts, and Yuan Wang for excellent research assistance. We acknowledge research support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MCIU), State Research Agency (AEI), and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF; Grant No. PGC2018-101745-A-I00) as well as MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER, UE Grant No. PID2021-125359NB-I00. Ma acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China Youth Project (Grant No. 72103008).

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