Investor Attention, Fee Structure, and Newly Issued Funds

This study examines the impact of investor attention on the fund inflows and survival of newly issued equity and bond funds. We employ the residual search volume index (RSVI) from Google Trends to directly measure investor attention to a mutual fund. We find that the RSVI is positively related to fund inflows for both new equity and bond funds. However, the RSVI is only positively related to the probability of survival for new equity funds, not for new bond funds. These results suggest that in addition to traditional channels such as advertising and sales forces, the Internet can serve as an alternative and effective tool for marketing and product distribution in the mutual fund industry.