Defined-contribution plans represent a major organizational form for investors´ retirement savings. Today more than one third of all workers are enrolled in 401K plans.(...)

Many financial institutions employ outside portfolio managers to manage part or all of their investable assets. These institutions include pension funds, private endowments (e.g., colleges and charities), and private trusts.(...)

This paper examines problems in the CRSP Survivor Bias Free U.S. Mutual Fund Database (CRSP, 1998) and compares returns contained in it to those in Morningstar. The CRSP database has an omission bias that has the same effects as survivorship bias. Although all mutual funds are listed in CRSP,...

The valuation of corporate debt is an important issue in asset pricing. While there has been an enormous amount of theoretical modeling of corporate bond prices, there has been relatively little empirical testing of these models 1.(...)