About

Richard B. Evans is the Senior Associate Dean for Research Services and Support and holds the C. Stewart Sheppard Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. His research broadly deals with investment decisions, with current projects exploring fund manager compensation and incentives, exchange-traded funds, corporate political activity and stock performance, short-selling, and quantitative versus fundamental investment strategies. His work has been published in prominent finance journals such as the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies. Evans's research has been cited by major financial press including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Forbes, as well as regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. General Accounting Office, and the White House Council of Economic Advisors. He has presented his research to the SEC, Federal Reserve, Social Security Administration, and the American Finance Association. Additionally, he serves on the editorial board of the Financial Analysts Journal and is the Academic Director of the Money Management Institute's Executive IQ Program. Evans holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in chemistry from the University of Utah and a master’s degree and doctorate in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Research topics

• Finance
• Economics
• Econometrics
• Business
• Computer Science
• Financial economics
• Microeconomics
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Monetary economics

Selected publications

• Almost Heaven? West Virginia State Pension Funds and Investing in Equity

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Self-Declared benchmarks and fund manager intent: “Cheating” or competing?

  Journal of Financial Economics · 2025-01-06 · 5 citations

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Phantom of the Opera: ETF Shorting and Shareholder Voting

  Management Science · 2025-05-19 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The short-selling of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) creates “phantom” ETF shares, trading at market prices, with cash flow rights but no associated voting rights. Unlike regular ETF shares backed by underlying securities, which are voted as directed by the ETF sponsor, phantom ETF shares are typically hedged by the underlying basket as part of market-making activities and result in a significant number of sidelined votes of underlying securities. We find that increases in phantom shares for the corresponding underlying securities are associated with decreases in the number of proxy votes cast and increases in broker nonvotes. This paper was accepted by Lukas Schmid, finance. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01567 .

  PublisherDOI

• Identity, Diversity, and Team Performance: Evidence from U.S. Mutual Funds

  Management Science · 2024-07-05 · 37 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We examine team diversity and performance in the asset management industry through the lens of identity. Focusing on political ideology as the relevant dimension of identity, we find that diverse teams outperform homogeneous teams. The mechanism involves both improved decision making due to more diverse perspectives and increased monitoring by heterogeneous team members. The benefits of ideological diversity are undone when political polarization is higher, consistent with increased intrateam conflict. In examining why less diverse teams are prevalent in asset management, we find entrenched managers prefer homogeneous teams, and the local labor market supply of ideologically diverse managers is constrained. This paper was accepted by Victoria Ivashina, finance. Funding: This work was funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [UID/ECO/00124/2013 and Social Sciences DataLab, Project 22209], POR Lisboa [LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-007722 and Social Sciences DataLab, Project 22209], and POR Norte [Social Sciences DataLab, Project 22209]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.00544 .

  PublisherDOI

• The Loan Fee Anomaly: A Short Seller’s Best Ideas

  Management Science · 2024-10-09 · 17 citations

  article

  We find that equity loan fees, which have been largely ignored by the anomalies literature, are the best predictor of cross-sectional returns. When compared with 102 other anomalies and other short-selling measures, the loan fee anomaly has the highest monthly long-short return (4.01%), the highest monthly Sharpe Ratio (0.66), and, unlike other anomalies, exhibits strong persistence throughout the sample. Although prior work has shown that existing anomalies reside in high loan fee stocks, we find that 42% of loan fee outperformance is due to unique information not contained in other anomalies. Future papers that examine cross-sectional predictors of returns should include the single most effective predictor: loan fees. This paper was accepted by Victoria Ivashina, finance. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.00152 .

  PublisherDOI

• Mutual fund performance and manager assets: The negative effect of outside holdings

  Financial Management · 2024 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Business
  • Finance
  • Economics

  Abstract We explore the relation between fund performance and the assets managed by the fund's managers that are outside the fund. Controlling for fund size, we find a negative relation between performance and the size of fund managers’ outside holdings, the number of other funds managed by a fund's managers, and the number of distinct fund categories managed by a fund's managers. This effect is driven by holdings that do not overlap with those held within the fund, and the effect's economic magnitude, while less than that of fund size, is comparable to that of fund family size and twice that of turnover. Endogeneity is addressed using fund mergers and recursive demeaning. Results suggest that manager responsibilities outside a fund significantly impact performance and that limited attention plays a role.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Peer Versus Pure Benchmarks in the Compensation of Mutual Fund Managers

  Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis · 2023 · 23 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Business
  • Finance
  • Psychology

  Abstract We examine the role of peer (e.g., Lipper manager indices) versus pure (e.g., S&P 500) benchmarks in fund manager compensation. We model their impact on manager incentives and then test those predictions using novel data. We find that 71% of managers are compensated based on peer benchmarks. Consistent with the model, peer-benchmarked fund managers exhibit higher effort generating higher gross performance and collect higher fee income. Analyzing advisors’ choice between benchmark types, we show that peer-benchmarking advisors cater to more sophisticated and performance-sensitive investors, and are more likely to sell through direct channels, consistent with investor heterogeneity and market segmentation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• (Not) Everybody's Working for the Weekend: A Study of Mutual Fund Manager Effort

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Nationalism, Subtle Bias, and Labor Outcomes: Evidence from Global Mutual Funds

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• ESG Skill of Mutual Fund Managers

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Susan E. K. Christoffersen

  University of Toronto

  36 shared

• Rüdiger Fahlenbrach

  17 shared

• David K. Musto

  University of Pennsylvania

  16 shared

• Miguel A. Ferreira

  European Corporate Governance Institute

  14 shared

• Melissa Porras Prado

  Universidade Nova de Lisboa

  11 shared

• Rabih Moussawi

  10 shared

• Pedro Matos

  European Corporate Governance Institute

  9 shared

• Rafael Zambrana

  University of Notre Dame

  7 shared

Awards & honors

• Santander Research Fellowship at Cambridge University
• Senior Research Fellowship at the Long-Term Investors think…