Best Buys and Own Brands: Investment Platforms' Recommendations of Mutual Funds

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cookson, Gordon; Jenkinson, Tim; Jones, Howard; Martinez, Jose Vicente
• 署名单位: University of Oxford; University of Connecticut
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF FINANCIAL STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0893-9454
• DOI: 10.1093/rfs/hhaa057
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 227
• 关键词: BROKERS

摘要

Individuals increasingly buy mutual funds via online platforms, whose best-buy recommendations heavily influence flows. As intermediaries of mutual funds, platforms provide none of the unobservable interaction or intangible benefits of brokers, and so allow clean tests of the determinants, influence, and value of their fund recommendations. Using unique U.K. data, we find that platforms favor own-brand funds and those paying them a higher commission share. Investors discount own-brand recommendations, but not those paying high commission shares (which were not observable in the United Kingdom). A regulatory ban on commission sharing lowered costs and improved the informativeness of platform recommendations.