Labor Mobility and Capital Misallocation in the Mutual Fund Industry

Abstract

If capital won’t come to fund managers, fund managers will go to capital. I document that fund managers move across mutual fund firms to manage amounts of capital that better match their skill, which improves the allocative efficiency of capital across fund managers. For causal identification, I exploit exogenous shocks to fund managers’ ability to switch firms due to state-level changes to non-compete laws. In states that strengthen the enforceability of non-compete agreements, the propensity of fund managers to switch mutual fund firms is halved, capital misallocation across managers increases by about 10%, and the sum of monthly value added of managers declines by over $25 million. These results indicate that fund managers’ mobility across firms plays an important role in the efficient allocation of capital within the mutual fund industry.