Strategic Cross-fund Subsidization: Evidence from Equity Funds in Korea

Abstract

This study uses Korea’s equity fund-related data ranging from Jan. 2002 to Apr. 2010 to analyze the existence of cross-subsidization among funds managed by the same management company. The findings are as follows: i) a transfer of performance outcome is confirmed to move from low-fee funds to high-fee funds, meaning that management companies tend to maximize their own interest than investors’ return. And such a tendency has been strengthened since 2008. ii) young funds overperform old funds, iii) funds with high returns in the previous quarter perform better than funds with low return in the same period. These results suggest that in order to protect investors, it is necessary to conduct close monitoring on transactions that might undermine the benefits of investors and comprehensive evaluation on the capability of management companies.

Keywords

• 전략적 행동(Strategic Behavior)
• 교차보조(Cross Subsidization)
• 투자자 보호(Investor Protection)