Carroll School of Management, Fulton Hall 154A
140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Citizenship: United States
Tel.: (215)-870-2764
Email: wernerb@bc.edu
PRIOR EDUCATION
2009 Lafayette College
B.S. in Mathematics (Cum Laude)
2010 University of Delaware, Alfred Lerner College of Business & Economics
M.S. in Finance
DOCTORAL STUDIES
2016 Boston College, Carroll School of Management
Ph.D., Finance
Research Interests

Retirement Security

Empirical Corporate Finance

Governance

Board of Directors
Work in Progress
“401(k) Plan Consultants: Distorted Incentives from Compensation Arrangements”
(Job Market Paper)
Costs and underlying menu composition of 401(k) plans are important factors that influence savings. These outcomes are beyond participant control, but should be the priority of the plan trustee. However, agency conflict arises from the fact that plan sponsors receive advice to select funds from families that have an interest in offering their own funds. The fact that plan menus are dominated by trustee funds is one manifestation of this conflict. I argue that one way to overcome this conflict of interests is by hiring a non-mutual fund consultant because he is more likely to serve in an independent capacity and thus able to provide an unbiased layer of monitoring. I further argue that the nature of compensation for this non-mutual fund consultant greatly influences the quality of his advice. The findings of this paper verify that the quality of consultant advice is directly related to whether or not the consultant receives compensation from referrals or commissions. Overall, my findings suggest that this additional layer of monitoring in 401(k) plans is only effective if the monitoring party's incentives are not distorted through underlying compensation arrangements.

“Board of Directors, Service Providers and 401(k) Plan Outcomes”
The widespread use of defined contribution plans, such as 401(k) plans, has resulted in an increasing shift in responsibility from employer to employee regarding investment decisions for retirement. While prior literature has studied 401(k) plans with respect to investor behavior, little has been done to understand the role of overseeing entities. In this paper, I use a proprietary dataset of publicly traded firm 401(k) plans to study the relation between 401(k) plans and the corresponding overseeing entities, which include external trustees, external non-trustees and internal firm directors. First, I find that external trustees and external non-trustees are associated with significantly positive 401(k) plan returns. Second, external non-trustees are associated with less investment menu diversification. Third, external non-trustees are also associated with lower overall plan expenses despite higher fund level expenses. Last, external trustees and insider board of directors are associated with more generous company matches. Overall, my findings shed new light on explaining 401(k) plan performance and structure-related characteristics outside of participant decisions.
“Implications of Governance Practices in Public Pension Plans”
REFERENCES
Professor Jonathan Reuter (Chair)
Professor of Finance
Fulton Hall, Boston College
Professor Pierluigi Balduzzi
Finance PhD Coordinator
Fulton Hall, Boston College
617-552-2863, jonathan.reuter@bc.edu
617-552-3976, balduzzp@bc.edu
Professor Alan Marcus
Professor of Finance
Fulton Hall, Boston College
617-552-2767, Alan.Marcus@bc.edu
Professor Hassan Tehranian
Senior Associate Dean of Faculty
Fulton Hall, Boston College
617-552-3944, hassan.tehranian@bc.edu
CONFERENCES ATTENDED

2013, 2014 ASSA Conference

Pension Research Council 2013 Symposium

2013 Retirement Research Consortium

2013 NBER Personal Retirement Challenges Meeting
BOSTON COLLEGE EXPERIENCE

2010-2011: Research Assistant to Pierluigi Balduzzi

2010-2012: Research Assistant to Jonathan Reuter

F2012: Teaching Assistant for undergraduate and MBA Financial Policy

S2013-S2015: Teaching Assistant for undergraduate and MBA Corporate Finance