We introduce a methodology for measuring systemic importance. Investors care about systemicimportance because this knowledge may enable them to assess their portfolio’s vulnerability toparticular events and, if warranted, to pursue defensive strategies. Policymakers also need thisinformation...

We use a proprietary database of private equity returns to measure the excess return of private equity over public equity and to partition it into two components: an asset class alpha and compensation for illiquidity. Our evidence suggests that private equity managers, as a group, generate alpha...

That investors should diversify their portfolios is a core principle of modern finance. Yet there are some periods where diversification is undesirable. When the portfolio’s main growth engine performs well, investors prefer the opposite of diversification. An ideal complement to the growth...

The authors apply a Hidden Markov Model to identify regimes of shifting inflation and then employ an attribution technique based on the Mahalanobis distance to identify the economic variables that determine the trajectory of inflation. Their analysis enables policymakers to focus on the most...

Investors typically measure an asset’s potential to diversify a portfolio by its correlations with the portfolio’s other assets, but correlation is useful only if it provides a good estimate of how an asset’s returns co-occur cumulatively with the other asset returns over the investor’s...