To determine whether the investment decisions of institutional plan sponsors
contribute to their asset values, this study used a dataset of 80,000 yearly
observations of institutional investment product assets, accounts, and returns
for 1984−2007. Results show that plan sponsors may not be acting in their
stakeholders’ best interests when they make rebalancing or reallocation
decisions. Investment products that receive contributions subsequently
underperform products experiencing withdrawals over one, three, and five years.
For investment decisions among equity, fixed-income, and balanced products, most
of the underperformance can be attributed to product selection. Tests suggest
that these results are not attributable to survivorship or other biases. Much
like individual investors who switch mutual funds at the wrong time,
institutional investors do not appear to create value from their investment
decisions.