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Executive Editor: Matthew Spiegel ♦ Editors: Geert Bekaert, Paolo Fulghieri, Alexander Ljungqvist, Laura Starks, Pietro Veronesi, Michael Weisbach
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News

March 8, 2010:

Should the RFS adopt a policy requiring authors to make their data available to the profession as a condition of publication? There are many pros and cons to this. Prior to adopting a policy, if any, we would welcome an opportunity to obtain your views in the RFS Forum.

December 28, 2009:

All of the decision letters for the Utah Winter Finance Conference dual submission papers have now gone out. If you are expecting to receive one and have not then please contact Matthew Spiegel at your earliest convenience.

December 8, 2009:

The Utah Winter Finance Conference reviews have been forwarded to the RFS. We hope to have decisions out prior to the New Year. Unfortunately, at this point that cannot be guaranteed. The editor in charge of the reviews, Matthew Spiegel, will soon be on the road for two weeks. But he has promised to work on processing the 100+ submissions from the conference as quickly as possible.

Send comments regarding this web page to Matthew Spiegel.

Turnaround:
Mean: 59.17 days
Median: 52 days
Total Submissions
(since 03/10/09): 1013
Acceptance Rate: 3.26%

Conference Announcements
Entrepreneurial Finance and Innovation Conference
June 14-15, 2010
The Inn at Harvard
Boston, MA
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 15

Texas Finance Festival
April 30 - May 1, 2010
AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center
Austin, TX
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 1, 2010


COLOR Pages!
The RFS publishes pages in color! You can include figures for free in the PDF files posted at Oxford University's web page Advanced Access. If you want some or all of the figures to appear in color in the printed version as well there is a service fee of $600 per figure. This just covers the journal's costs.
Forthcoming in the RFS

Assessing the Costs and Benefits of Brokers in the Mutual Fund Industry
by Daniel Bergstresser, John M. R. Chalmers, and Peter Tufano

Many investors purchase mutual funds through intermediated channels, paying brokers or financial advisors for fund selection and advice. This article attempts to quantify the benefits that investors enjoy in exchange for the costs of these services. We study broker-sold and direct-sold funds from 1996 to 2004, and fail to find that brokers deliver substantial tangible benefits. Relative to direct-sold funds, broker-sold funds deliver lower risk-adjusted returns, even before subtracting distribution costs. These results hold across fund objectives, with the exception of foreign equity funds. Further, broker-sold funds exhibit no more skill at aggregate-level asset allocation than do funds sold through the direct channel. Our results are consistent with two hypotheses: that brokers deliver substantial intangible benefits that we do not observe and that there are material conflicts of interest between brokers and their clients.

 

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