Because a money manager learns more about her skill from her management experience than outsiders can learn from her realized returns, she expects inefficiency in future contracts that condition exclusively on realized returns. A fund family that learns what the manager learns can reduce this inefficiency cost if the family is large enough. The family's incentive is to retain any given manager regardless of her skill but, when the family has enough managers, it adds value by boosting the credibility of its retentions through the firing of others. As the number of managers grows, the efficiency loss goes to zero.

Because a money manager learns more about her skill from her management experience than outsiders can learn from her realized returns, she expects inefficiency in future contracts that condition exclusively on realized returns. A fund family that learns what the manager learns can reduce this inefficiency cost if the family is large enough. The family's incentive is to retain any given manager regardless of her skill but, when the family has enough managers, it adds value by boosting the credibility of its retentions through the firing of others. As the number of managers grows, the efficiency loss goes to zero. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.