Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract We examine the relation between mutual fund votes on shareholder executive compensation proposals and pension-related business ties between fund families and the firms. In unconditional tests, we find that fund families support management when they have pension ties to the firm. We find no relation when we stratify by fund family in conditional tests, which suggests that fund families with pension ties vote with management at both client and nonclient firms. We confirm this result in an analysis of nonclient firms. Overall, our results suggest that pension-related business ties influence fund families to vote with management at all firms.

Abstract U.S. equity mutual funds, on average, prefer realization of capital losses to capital gains. Nevertheless, a substantial fraction exhibits the disposition effect of realizing gains more readily than losses. My analysis suggests that learning effects have reduced the manifestation of the disposition effect over time, implying that academic research has influenced industry practices. When funds experience outflows and are managed by teams of portfolio managers, they are more susceptible to selling disproportionately more winners than losers. Disposition-driven behavior affects investment style, causing lower market betas and characteristics of value-oriented and contrarian styles, but has no observable effect on fund performance.