A prominent factor used in most models predicting stock returns is firm size. Yet no consensus has emerged on the magnitude and stability of the size premium, with some researchers even questioning the usefulness of the factor. To take stock of the voluminous academic literature on the size...

In contrast with theoretical predictions, high-fee active equity funds generate worse net-of-expenses performance. We show that this fee-performance puzzle is driven by the preference of high-fee funds for stocks with low operating profitability and high investment rates, characteristics...

This paper analyses the contribution of survey data, in particular various sentiment indicators, to nowcasts of quarterly euro area GDP. It uses a genuine real-time dataset that is constructed from original press releases in order to transform the actual dataflow into an interpretable flow of...

The main argument of this paper is that there is considerable heterogeneity in the way aid can shape tax performance in developing countries: through behavioural effects, donor conditionality, recipient policy reform and technical assistance; and these effects are country-specific. We investigate...

In this paper we extract latent factors from a large cross-section of commodity prices, including fuel and non-fuel commodities. We decompose each commodity price series into a global (or common) component, block-specific components and a purely idiosyncratic shock. We find that the bulk of the...