Portfolio Manager Compensation in the U.S. Mutual Fund Industry

Using a unique hand-collected dataset of over 4,000 mutual funds, we study the compensation structures of individual portfolio managers in the U.S. mutual fund industry. About three-quarters of the portfolio managers in our sample receive performance-linked pay from investment advisors. Managers wit...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ma, Linlin, TANG, Yuehua, Gomez, Juan-Pedro
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/3695
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2024027
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Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary:Using a unique hand-collected dataset of over 4,000 mutual funds, we study the compensation structures of individual portfolio managers in the U.S. mutual fund industry. About three-quarters of the portfolio managers in our sample receive performance-linked pay from investment advisors. Managers with performance-based compensation exhibit superior fund performance, especially when advisors link pay to performance over longer time periods. By contrast, we do not find that alternative compensation arrangements such as pay linked to fund assets or advisor profits are associated with better fund performance. Performance-linked pay is more prevalent among larger investment advisors, non-stakeholder portfolio managers, portfolio management teams, and in-house managed funds. Overall, our study provides novel empirical evidence on portfolio manager compensation in the mutual fund industry.