Hedge funds offer desirable risk-return profiles; but we also find high management fees, lack of transparency and worse, very limited liquidity (they are often closed to new investors and disinvestment fees can be prohibitive). This creates an incentive to replicate the attractive features of...

We propose a novel methodology that jointly estimates the proportions of skilled/unskilled funds and the cross-sectional distribution of skill in the mutual fund industry. We model this distribution as a three-component mixture of a point mass at zero and two components — one negative, one...

We develop a novel approach to jointly examine skill, scale, and value added across individual funds. We find that the value added is (i) positive for the vast majority of funds, and (ii) close to its optimal level after an adjustment period possibly due to investors' learning. We also show that...

We present a self-consistent model for explosive financial bubbles, which combines a mean-reverting volatility process and a stochastic conditional return which reflects nonlinear positive feedbacks and continuous updates of the investors' beliefs and sentiments. The conditional expected returns...

Using data for the 1978-2008 period, this study presents evidence for cointegration between securitized (NAREIT) and direct (NCREIF) total return indices. Cointegration between the indices indicates that REITs and direct real estate are substitutable in the portfolio of a long-horizon...

Private equity has traditionally been thought to provide diversi cation bene ts. However, these benefi ts may be lower than anticipated. We find that private equity suffers from signifi cant exposure to the same liquidity risk factor as public equity and other alternative asset classes. The...

We implement a long-horizon static and dynamic portfolio allocation involving a risk-free and a risky asset. This model is calibrated at a quarterly frequency for ten European countries. We also use maximum-likelihood estimates and Bayesian estimates to account for parameter uncertainty. We find...

We evaluate how non-normality of asset returns and the temporal evolution of volatility and higher moments affects the conditional allocation of wealth. We show that if one neglects these aspects, as would be the case in a mean-variance allocation, a sighifiant cost would arise. The performance...

In this paper, we extend the concept of News Impact Curve developed by Engle and Ng (1993) to the higher moments of the multivariate returns' distribution, thereby providing a tool to investigate the impact of shocks on the characteristics of the subsequent distribution. For this purpose, we...

We revisit the apparent historical success of technical trading rules on daily prices of the DJIA index from 1897 to 2011, and use the False Discovery Rate as a new approach to data snooping. The advantage of the FDR over existing methods is that it selects more outperforming rules which allows...