Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Brokers And Investment Advisors, Nathaniel Phillip Graham

Theses and Dissertations--Finance and Quantitative Methods

Brokers and investment advisors are a large and important part of the financial industry. Using a novel data set that includes the majority of the financial advisory industry, in this dissertation I document the size of the financial advisory industry and the prevalence of customer complaints in the industry, which I use as a proxy for misconduct. I then test for two potential drivers of advisors’ misconduct: professional standards in the form of fiduciary responsibilities and influence from social networks. I find that variation in fiduciary duties—specifically fiduciary versus suitability standards— does not appear to affect advisors’ propensity for misconduct. …