共同基金契約制或公司制？從代理成本來看

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of mutual fund organization types-contract-type or corporation-type- in mitigating agency conflicts in mutual fund industry. Compared to contract-type mutual funds, corporate-type mutual funds give rise to an extra layer of agency relationship: the relationship between the board of directors and the fund managers. This study examines whether the extra layer of board of directors inherent in the corporate-type mutual funds, but not in contract-type mutual funds, can play a role in monitoring the opportunism of fund managers/fund families. In particular, this study investigates the potential gains of monitoring which include mitigating agency problem induced from the opaqueness of a fund’s investment strategy. Using US mutual funds with corporate-type and Taiwan mutual funds with similar style but contract-type over the period from 01/1998 to 12/2017, the current study finds that: on average, corporate-type mutual funds, compared to contract-type mutual funds, can mitigate agency problem induced from the opaqueness of a fund’s investment strategy.