How Active Management Survives

Abstract

There is much evidence that passive equity strategies dominate active equity management, but many investors remain committed to active investing despite its poor relative performance. We explore the behavioral-economic hypothesis that investors fall prey to the conjunction fallacy, believing good returns are more likely if investment is accompanied by hard work. This is an especially plausible manifestation of the conjunction fallacy, because in most areas of life hard work leads to greater success than laziness. Our internet survey results show that from 30% to over 60% of higher-income, over-30 individuals fall prey to the conjunction fallacy in this context, raising significant questions for law and regulatory policy, including whether actively-managed equity products should carry warnings, at least for retail investors.