Recent studies document both a significant decline in firms’ propensity to pay dividends and a significant increase in firms’ propensity to repurchase shares and issue equity over the past 30 years. In this paper we test whether firms’ net cash disbursements to equity holders have declined...

Using a large sample of hedge fund manager characteristics, we provide one of the first comprehensive studies on the impact of manager characteristics, such as education and career concern, on hedge fund performances. We document differential ability among hedge fund managers in either...