The benefit of investment advice depends on the quality of advice and the investor's counterfactual portfolio. We use changes in the Oregon University System Optional Retirement Plan to highlight the impact of plan design on the counterfactual portfolios of advice seekers. When brokers are available and target date funds (TDFs) are not, brokers help participants with high predicted demand for advice bear market risk, but they recommend higher-commission options. When brokers are removed and TDFs are added, new high-predicted-demand participants primarily invest in TDFs, which offer similar market risk but higher Sharpe ratios than the broker-advised portfolios within our sample.

We study the choice between named and anonymous mutual fund managers. We argue that fund families weigh the benefits of naming managers against the cost associated with their increased future bargaining power. Named managers receive more media mentions, have greater inflows, and suffer less return diversion due to within family cross-subsidization, but departures of named managers reduce net flows. Naming managers became less common between 1993 and 2004. This was especially true in the asset classes and cities most affected by the hedge fund boom, which increased outside opportunities for, and the cost of retaining, successful named managers.