Publications

Journal Article

The authors hypothesize that social trust, in mitigating contracting incompleteness, may have an important effect on the activeness and effectiveness of delegated portfolio management.

Using a complete sample of worldwide open-end mutual funds, the authors find that trust is positively associated with the activeness of funds and that trust-related active share delivers superior performance (e.g., approximately 2% per year for cross-border investments). Moreover, “trust in the market” and “trust in managers” play important yet different roles for different types of cross-border delegated portfolio management.

The authors' results suggest that trust acts as a fundamental building block for delegated portfolio management.