In one of the most insightful studies of active managers, Cremers and Petajisto (2009) found that it is the most active equity managers (i.e. those that take the largest bets relevant to their benchmark) that achieved the best performance. Bird and Yeung (2011) found that this positive outcome for active managers only applied in strongly performing markets. A recent research paper addresses the relationship between active management and performance for bond managers.

The other side of the equation is the fees charged by active managers, which is the ...